Rose Notes

Gratitude

Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
Kahlil Gibran

Yesterday morning, after a photo frenzy with some rose buds, I looked at the kitchen counter. The formica expanse had a cluster of the week's vases, ready for putting away. Shoot it- I thought- don't move anything- no styling.

As I clicked, I plunged into a rapture of gratitude for loving photography. Later, when I looked at the shots, I liked one and thought- why not post just the one photo and find a gratitude quote for it?

As the day progressed with more photography, blog reading, and photo processing, it occurred to me that it would be fun, and a challenge, to post something everyday in November. 

Happy November 1st!

Hallow or haunted ?

L X I X

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting
External ghost,
Than an interior confronting
That whiter host.

Far safer through an Abbey gallop,
The stones achase,
Than, moonless, one's own self encounter
In lonesome place.

Ourself, behind ourself concealed,
Should startle most;
Assasin, hid in our apartment,
Be horror's least.

The prudent carries a revolver,
He bolts the door,
O'erlooking a superior spectre
More near.

Emily Dickinson

Barbara Worl's Autumn Garden 2009

 

How would you feel about entering the fantastical garden of a treasured, Bay Area rosarian? Once outside Barbara Worl's gate, I forgot everything! I was there to interview her, but didn't even have a pencil and paper. I did have a camera though, and managed to take this image of Barbara as she came out to greet my friend Mary and me. The neighbor's kitty, Firecracker, checked us out, and then we were allowed entrance into Barbara's magical world.

It's hard to believe that Barbara's lush, other-worldly garden is on a modest city plot, located near downtown Menlo Park, California. Well-pruned fruit trees– guavas, kumquats, peaches, persimmons, and tree-leaping roses form a canopy, hiding Barbara's home, and sheltering a horticultural paradise. Light enters the canopy lace, and spotlights garden details throughout the day. In the back garden, amaranth rules the kingdom.

Roses and dahlias thread their way through grasses, clumping asters, lilies, rudbeckia, Japanese anenome, abutilon, salvias, solanum, and endless other delights.

Mary and I couldn't stop the exclamations and Barbara was a cheerful fount of stories and horticultural gems. Stay tuned, I have much more to show and tell you about Barbara, and her garden, in a future post.

Chicken Roasted on Potatoes and Garlic

Potatoes ready for roasting, looked so pretty, I took a picture. (I had no idea if the recipe was good.)

The dish turned out wonderful, so the next day all the ingredients gathered for a class photo.

The recipe called for oregano– didn't have it– however marjoram reseeds itself all over the garden.

Baking the chicken tenders on a bed of half-roasted vegetables, seemed like a novel idea– the moisture from the veggies steam-bakes the chicken.

The finished dish is great for a potluck.

Several years ago I purchased the cookbook, Flavours, because of Petrina Tinslay’s beautiful photography. I didn’t care about the recipes (I wanted to study the photos) and certainly never anticipated having a blog. And the idea of food blogging was preposterous. Aah, life is so full of surprises.

Recently, hard-up for a chicken tenders treatment, I looked up chicken in the, Flavours, glossary. The following recipe sounded good and I happened to have a bag of adorable multi-colored potatoes. Well, I’ve made the recipe about six times now and we've taken it to two potlucks. Here’s my adaptation:

Chicken Roasted with Potatoes and Garlic

2T olive oil for veggies; 1 or 2 T more for chicken
6 (or enough to layer a baking sheet) new potatoes (one kind or a mix), cut in chunks
1 large yellow onion cut in chunks
1/4 cup of fresh marjoram, or oregano
12 fat cloves of garlic
1-2 lbs. chicken tenders brushed w olive oil, sprinkled with s&p
Paprika

Preheat the oven to 400°. Toss the potatoes, onions, garlic, and herbs with olive oil and salt and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove vegetables from the oven, and place chicken tenders on top. Return to oven and bake another 12  to 15 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.

The house smells so good while this dish is baking. When the chicken is done I remove it and slice it, at an angle, into chunks. Sometimes I put the potatoes back in the oven, under the broiler, for five minutes for a little browning. When the potatoes are ready, toss with the chicken and sprinkle all with paprika.

I served the chicken and potatoes on top of salad, when we had our friends Mary and Roy over for lunch recently. They loved it.

PS food bloggers, I highly recommend the cookbook, Flavours, for its inspirational photos.

  

Here's to You Lady Roberts (rose)

Can you stand it? Isn't she magnificent?

On a recent day trip, with my friend Mary, to the Historic Sacramento Cemetery Rose Garden, Anita Clevenger told us to be sure, before we left, to take a look at 'Lady Roberts'. It wasn't until later that afternoon that we finally made the Lady's acquaintance. Well, I couldn't get enough of her and proceeded to shoot her from every angle.

This one kills me– my ideal rose face. Isn't it interesting how different she looks, here, from the open one, three pictures up.

Here's 'Lady Roberts' in her plot at the Sacramento Cemetery. Still a young plant; the rose is not readily in commerce. Hopefully there will be seedlings available at next April's silent auction. Below is the text Jeri Jennings prepared about 'Lady Roberts' for the 2008 auction.

Lady Roberts

--  Sport of Anna Olivier; Int. England, 1902, Frank Cant)

Once highly regarded, (a multiple Gold Medal winner) this lovely amber-toned Tea seems to have disappeared from commerce in the U.S.   Her rarity may in part be attributed to the ease with which she sports back to her parent, Anna Olivier. In her day, Lady Roberts drew high praise from California rosarians.  She was recommended as a good grower and free bloomer, disease-resistant, suitable for garden or house ornamentation, or for growing under glass.   Though available in Australia, we cannot now find a commercial source for this beauty in the U.S. Lady Roberts is a vigorous, continuous-blooming rose, once mature.  Contemporary advice notes that the richest color will be obtained if the rose is planted in a south-facing position.  Treasure this rare beauty, and enjoy it!    

Here I am at the end of a fabulous rose day. I'll be posting more about the cemetery roses soon.

Special Event at the Sacramento Historic Cemetery

Saturday, November 21, 2009 – 10:00 am
Fall Color in the Cemetery Garden Tour
Tour Guide: Anita Clevenger

GGW Plant Pick of the Month– Variegated Foliage

Japanese Maple 'Butterfly' in the back garden. 

Miscanthus senensis 'Gold Bar' with  abutilon in the yellow border.

Yellow Abutilon, and then in the . . .

. . . White Rose Garden

Molinia caerulea 'Variegata' under the rose 'Winchester Cathedral'.

Hydrocotyle sibthorpioides 'Variegated Pennywort' under 'Katherina Zeimet 'rose.

Silene 'Druett's Variegated' with same 'KZ' rose.

Iris pallida 'Variagata' near Rosa rugosa 'Alba.'

When Gardening Gone Wild posted a request for posts about variegated plants, I jumped into the archives to see what I could find.

The Japanese Maple, at the top, is in the pink stage of new spring leaves; it will soon be green and white. This is a small tree that I purchased at the wonderful Moraga Garden Center in Moraga, California.

My garden has many color themes, which I’ve found particularly inspiring– the “where shall I plant it” syndrome is rarely an issue. The miscanthus-abutilon pairing was a happy surprise.

Roses form the focus and structure in my garden, so it’s kind of fun to show a peek of the white rose section here. Green and white variegated leaves are a ‘must’ with white roses, and the molinea caerula is a workhorse clumping grass that never misbehaves– meaning there are no seedlings popping up in unwanted places.

The pennywort was sold as an aquarium plant, which I just had to try. It’s proved to be very dependable, long lasting, and doesn’t run too far a field.

The silene was good for a few years until it began weakening, and then reverting back to it’s non-variegated form. The blooms are a delight though.

The iris is in the white garden, for the foliage of course, but I tend to think of lavender as a plant the goes well in all the rose color sections, which are yellow, peach, pink, red, and white. 

Thanks GGW for the chance to show a little of my garden!

I heard them fall (rose petals)

I went to a memorial last evening for a man who wondered each morning if the day ahead would be his last. He was a poet, and wrote eloquently about appreciating moments and small things. Since he was ill for years, he had many golden moments– often shared.

When I heard the petals fall this morning, I thought of him.

The rose is Hermosa, which means beautiful in Spanish.

Introducing RoseLetters at Etsy

One early spring day, a gardener gazed up, admiring the small pink blooms and lacy leaves on a climbing rose. A thought zoomed through her mind to make an 'R' for the word Rose. "Oh yes," she said to herself, “I’ll photograph the R.” The rose letter turned out so beautiful, that she decided to create an entire alphabet in roses.

That gardener was me, and to my surprise, my garden contained twenty-two of the roses that eventually made up my rose alphabet, which then became the cornerstone for my book, R is for Rose.

From the beginning, I thought people might love to have their own names or intitals, or those of loved ones, embellished with roses. Now, twelve years after the first letter was created, I'm offering the entire alphabet, in 8x10 individual prints, for sale on etsy.

From my shop home page, if you click on one of the alphabet letters, you’ll see the letter enlarged and a series of thumbnails, like the ones above. Some show framing possibilities. (If you click on the thumbnails, they too will enlarge.)

 

The thumbnails also show the rose in action, and there's a little text as well. Wouldn’t you like to know, if your initial is J, that the rose ‘Just Joey’ has one of the most beautiful faces around, or that “the sweetheart rose” (C) may be purchased as both a shrub and a climber?

SPECIAL ORDERS

Special orders and requests are welcome in my etsy shop. There are endless possibilities for RoseLetters.

Many of the thumbnail photos might be familiar to those of you who have my book. I'm happy to announce that the photos are also for sale, by special request. In the right hand column, on etsy, you'll find a contact button. Don't be shy; I'd love to hear from you. ;-)

 

 

Rain and Roses– October 14, 2009

 


When rain comes to California, there is celebration throughout the land–– and bliss saturates the hearts of gardeners. I planned a stream of seven photos to show my appreciation for said rain, however editing really is everything.

The pink beauty is 'Belle Poitevine'.

 

California Storm- October 13, 2009

I've found that weather, as a tried and true conversation piece, also applies in a big way to blogs– and often with pictures. California's first rain (gusher) of the season is all over the blogosphere. Two I particularly like are here and here. I may be a day late, but as you can see, I too have a contribution.

Since we have a huge and messy Silver Leaf Maple extending massive leafy branches over our house, I thought it would be a good idea to have a de-clogging mesh product stuffed into new gutters that were installed last March.

Not such a good idea. The maple's spring buds and subsequent seedpods snugly lodged in and around the mesh. Once we discovered the problem, during the storm, my (always the artist) husband managed a 'remove the mesh' performance piece.


There were several costume changes– this being the final one.

The Day After

It seems the sun always shines bright the day after.