Rose for winter

This is Hybrid tea "Julia's rose." It's growing in a large pot on my deck, and today it has 5 buds or blossoms on it.

It's an unusally colored rose - it's almost tan, because what would be a delicate peach is muted by a colder hue.

Here in bud it's closer to peach-pink, but as it opens and ages, its color changes.

Another bloom.

When "Julia's rose" is in full bloom, the flower opens to reveal the godlen stamens inside. It's a beautiful, subtle rose, perfect in November's slanting golden light.

First rose of the season

This is the old China rose, "Eugene de Beauharnais," and it's the first rose to bloom in my garden this year.

It is said to date from 1838, although there is now some talk that the rose sold as "Eugene de Beauharnais" is really a Bourbon called "Le Grande Capitaine."

It's a low-growing shrub - mine is being swamped by a nearby Gaura lindheimeri "Siskyou Pink." It opens fully double, quartered blossoms a clear cherry red, and then the petals age to violet. It's scent is super-strong, "old-rose" and quite intoxicating.

For me, it's a weak and spindly plant wholly justified by its amazing scent and intriguing color. It blooms all year long - well, it starts early and ends late, but there are periods of no bloom in between.

It's named after Napoleon's stepson - the child of Empress Josephine and her first husband, Alexandre the Vicomte de Beauharnais. He was quite a military hero, and his step-father appointed him to several duchys and various other noble offices. He married a Bavarian princess and had plenty of kids who married a bunch of other European royals.

He's pretty happy here in my garden, despite the gaura. I think I'll keep him.

Pink Saturday - Generosity

Pink Saturday - Beverly at the blog "How Sweet the Sound" hosts Pink Saturday. Let the color pink inspire you!

This spring, I went on a garden tour that was amazing. We visited properties designed by experts in one of Los Angeles' most exclusive neighborhoods.

Of all the plants and plantings that impressed me, one thing that really transfixed me was a beautiful, fragrant climbing rose I saw at one home.

Planted on an arbor in a sheltered, hidden courtyard, it had delicate silvery pink flowers, fully double like pompons. The owner said that it was a rose her mother had brought to Los Angeles from Colombia, and said its name was Silva Madre.

I went to sleep thinking about it. Could I buy one? I searched the internet for it, and came up with nothing. I looked for alternate spellings. I haunted online forums about found roses. I actually fantasized about sneaking onto the property and taking cuttings.

Well, that kind of caper wouldn't go well, surely. What 56 year old woman wants to be thrown in the slammer for trespassing and stealing rose twigs? And would anyone bail me out?

I came to my senses. Trusting in the inherent generosity of gardeners, that Monday morning I took my nicest notepaper and wrote by hand a note to "Resident" at the address of the garden. I thanked them for their hospitality in opening their home to fellow gardeners. I expressed my admiration of their garden and particularly that wonderful rose. Then I asked if it would be at all possible for me to come and take a few cuttings in the hopes of rooting them for my own garden.

I dropped it off at the post office on my way to work.

A few days later, there was a message on my voice mail. It was the woman who owned the garden. Of course I could come and take a cutting. Her schedule was limited, but she told me when she would be available.

I pulled my battered little Volkswagen up to the curb and parked - not wanting to drive into the graveled front yard. I felt very nervous, knocking on the front door of this lovely and somewhat intimidating house. Above the door, in the second floor window, a worker was tidying the geraniums in the window box. I rang the bell, and waited for what seemed to be a long time. Soon, the door opened.

A lovely gray-haired lady answered, and I introduced myself. She introduced herself as Clara. She drew me into the house and we walked down the hallway, through the rooms and out through the back loggia - a pretty, sheltered space graced with a Moroccan ceramic plaque. From here, we stepped down into the secret garden where the rose grew.


I had brought my clippers, and tentatively cut a few shoots. The owner took them from me and cut a whole handful of substantial shoots and pushed them into my arms. I thanked her over and over - I don't quite know why I felt so awkward, but I did.

I had prepared a pot with moist soil, and brought a little jar of Root-tone - rooting hormone powder. When I walked out through the hedges, I went back to my car and right there on the hood of the car, I trimmed the shoots, slit the stems and dipped them into the powder, and pressed them into the moist soil. I slipped a plastic bag over the pot, inflated it with my breath, and tied the bag with a twist-tie.

Books will tell you it takes about 6 weeks for a rose cutting to take. Some roses are harder to strike than others. You have to balance between keeping it too enclosed, and encouraging rot or mold, and allowing it to dry out and die.

I spent the summer watching the pot, opening the plastic to let it ventilate, and inflating it again and sealing it when the dry desert winds threatened to sere it.

This past weekend, I finally potted up the one little twig that took. It's strong, though, and I think it will make a go of it.

Thank you, Clara. I know this rose will be as beautiful as yours, someday. There is a magazine story with photos about Clara's lovely house and garden, Here.

Thematic Photographic - Flowers

"Thematic Photographic" - Carmi at the blog Written, Inc. presents a weekly themed photographic challenge. This week's theme is FLOWERS. Check in and see who else contributes photos based on this idea.

"A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose," said Gertrude Stein, famously, in her 1913 poem Sacred Emily.

But what do you get when a rose becomes a commodity?

California's cut flower industry began in the 1870s in Ventura County. Today, California is the state with the largest cut flower industry in the U.S.

Even so, the heyday of the California industry is over. 79% of the cut flowers sold in the United States are imported from other countries - and 59% of those come from the South American country of Colombia.

If you go to Los Angeles' downtown wholesale flower market, you'll find wonders. Among them are roses from Colombia - in all shapes and colors.

As a commodity, the rose has been tweaked and manipulated to appeal to as many market segments as possible. There are even tinted roses in lime green or bright blue.

The Colombian rose industry employs around 80,000 workers. 80% of them are women. They prune, harvest, sort, and package the flowers. Workers are affected by exposure to herbicides and pesticides, with symptoms like nausea, rash, and impaired vision. Long time exposure has been linked to birth defects, miscarriages and neurological problems. They also suffer from repetitive stress injuries, heat stress, and other ailments.

The ecological cost of the industry is encroachment of cultivated lands on native forests, and the effects of widespread use of herbicides and pesticides, which pollute rivers and contaminate cultivated vegetables and cows' milk.

The roses are wrapped in corrugated paper, packed together in space-saving square bundles in boxes, and flown by air to Los Angeles, where they end up here, in the Los Angeles flower market.

Just like so many widgets, products, units, items and other cheap junk that flood our modern lives.

Have we really done this to what was once the queen of flowers?

Friday Flower Blogging - Rose of Topanga

When you visit older properties in Topanga, you often encounter this rose. The flowers are tiny, like a miniature rose, and they are an exquisitely delicate shell pink.

The plant, in contrast, is a thick-stemmed monster, with arching canes of blossoms rising high over your head.

This is Climbing 'Cecile Brunner', a sport of the polyantha rose by the same name, registered in 1881. It's sometimes called "The Sweetheart Rose" for its delicate pink blossoms. I like to think of her as the Rose of Topanga, because there are so many plants around this canyon.

My friend Jill claims that Cecile Brunner is what's really holding up the porch on her house - not the posts of the porch. Down the street from us, a 'Cecile Brunner' has engulfed my neighbor's fence whole. In other places, you can see it growing into the trees.

If you want to buy Climbing 'Cecile Brunner', you can find her in garden centers and mail-order nurseries, but I would guess that most of the plants in Topanga were grown from cuttings - and you could do the same.

Growing a rose from a cutting is the easiest thing in the world to do. Not only it is economical and satisfying, it continues a long tradition of gardening that has spread roses around the world, and has preserved antique treasures. Pioneers crossing the continent brought slips of roses to their new homes - some of those roses were in turn brought from their ancestors' homes in Europe. If you had to pick up and leave North Carolina for California, Texas or Iowa, you couldn't always bring grandmother's sideboard, but you could bring a slip of the rose that grew on her grave.

You can use the rose you put in a vase on your dining room table. Or the one your friend brought to work. When you're done enjoying the blossom, cut it off. Then trim the bottom of the stem, diagonally. Keep some of the leaves on the stem if you can. Then stick it into moist dirt, and wait for it to grow roots.

There are lots of variations to the technique. Some people dip the stem into a rooting hormone powder you can buy at the garden center. I have the best success if I root it in a 4- inch pot that I then enclose in a plastic bag - like the ones you get in the produce section at the supermarket - sealed with a twist-tie, and then let it sit in a shady place. Other people just stick the cutting right in the garden, and sometimes put a glass jar on top - you have to make sure it's in a shady place, though - don't do this in blasting sun.

In a couple months, you have a brand new rose bush - for FREE!

Although people associate this with old roses or wild roses, it works with almost any rose. When my mom visited me in Seattle, she was so impressed with an Austin rose in my garden called 'The Yeoman' that she took a slip home to Texas. A couple years after moving to California, I came home from visiting Mom with a slip of 'The Yeoman' from her now mature and blooming shrub - and planted my own shrub.

In some parts of the country there are groups of rosarians who scout old cemetaries and abandonded homesteads searching for old, unidentified roses that they can propagate and save from obscurity. They give their finds temporary names - "Old Cemetary Red" - until after much research, collaboration and discussion, someone manages to identify what it is.

There's something I like about this. We can gift one another with fragrant roses, we can save precious cultivars from dying out, and we can coax life from a green stick and a pot of dirt. Isn't it wonderful?

Garden Ramble

Although I've done two "Friday Flower Blogging" posts [The Man I Love] reminds me of something I used to say ten years ago when I spent a lot more time in my garden.

I used to come home from work each day and take a moment to walk around the garden and see how everything was doing. I'd say, "I'm going for a Garden Ramble."

This was my moment to look at everything and see how it was doing. I kept a journal noting when something was planted, when a seed sprouted, when it bloomed. It was always good to see the new points of bulbs an inch taller than yesterday afternoon, or the tender buds of the rose showing color now, when they were green and tightly closed the day before.

Here in Southern California, I don't Ramble as often as I should. But today, this is what's happening. The rambling single rose, "Darlow's Enigma" is in fragrant bloom. There's a story behind this rose, and its namesake - remind me to tell it someday.


Here's a scotch broom cultivar - "Lilac Time" - with its lavender, carmine, amber and pink blossoms.

That's what it's like today in my garden.