Spring! Spring! Spring!

It's not yet Peak Rose, but all sorts of things are booming and sprouting and leafing out.

For example, 'Hot Cocoa' is putting on this season's first flowers.  Believe it or not, this is actually an accurate depiction of the color.  Matt hates it, but I find it strange and entrancing.  Even more than most roses, HC's color varies with the weather--cooler temperatures bring out the browny-silvery-lilacy tones that lurk under the orangey-red.

 

A lovely 'Hot Cocoa' bloom

'Green Rose' was one of our first roses to pop into bloom, and it's kept it up admirably.  Interesting, as the "flowers" fade, they turn kind of straw-colored, which is the only time they're terribly visible. 

'Green Rose'--what can I say? We like floral oddities.

Meanwhile, Tulipa clusiana 'Tinka' materialized almost overnight. I had no idea they had even sprouted, when suddenly, they were in full bloom.  Unlike many T. clusianas, this cultivar has warm golden yellow accents.

T. clusiana 'Tinka'

The Iris virginiana slip that I bought 2-3 years ago from Madrone Nursery has finally bloomed.  It's a long, leggy thing, with a bright blue bloom.

Iris virginiana--purportedly, an unusually salt-tolerant variety, which will come in handy when the sea levels rise, but not much before

Poppies!  Last year we sowed whole heap of Papaver somniferum from my Aunt P. I think we maybe got one small, sad bloom? Not a good year for the wildflowers--beastly drought.  But this year, all of last year's frustrated seeds went nuts, and we have an impenetrable thicket of poppies. I've been checking on them (almost) daily, but one managed to bloom without my seeing it. Nevermind--there are about 50 more buds in on the way.

A blue-green forest of poppies, heavy with buds

'Mlle Franziska Kruger'--I'm not actually nuts about the quilled, wadded look that Mlle FK specializes in, but the colors are so very pretty--she's almost as changeable as Mutabilis.

One of Mlle Franziska Kruger's scrunched up flowers

And I caught 'Isabella Sprunt' about 30 seconds too late.  Her flowers spend a long time as slender, elegant, very Tea-ish buds, then open into quite elegant and formal blooms... for about 5 minutes.  After which they turn into this rather untidy thing, and by the next day, half the petals will have dropped.  Still, that pale butter color is nice.  But if you have to choose between them, don't hesitate: go with 'Ducher.'

The mayfly-like flowers of 'Isabella Sprunt'

It seems like every spring, a different rose delights and surprises me.  This year, it's 'Kaiserin Friedrich.'  As a climber, she goes straight up--long, straight, limbs that withstand bending and weaving better than the average rose (I hate it when you're trying to thread a rose through a trellis and you have to bend... bend... bend--and at the last minute, it snaps).  But her upward tendencies mean the blooms are a bit thin around her knees--she has (so far--we're in her 2nd year) few lateral branches to break into bloom.  However.  She has a decent load of blooms at the top, and I think she's starting to do a little more branching, so hopefully the trellis will fill in.  But above all, how nifty are these flowers?  Check out the ruffled margins on the petals of these buds.

The precisely fluted petals of two 'Kaiserin Friedrich' rose buds

They'd be fussy if it weren't for the obvious toughness and vitality of the plant itself.  And look at the lovely range of colors: cream to soft yellow to peach to pink with darker pink margins.  And that complex array of petals!  It brings a real touch of sophistication to our otherwise rough-and-tumble DIY sort of a garden.

A fully open 'Kaiserin Friedrich' blossom

Holy Cumulostratus!

This season's first bloom on 'Hot Cocoa,' showing its funky browny-orange-red coloring quite nicely.  When it heats up, the bush will keep blooming, but in a less iconoclastic camaro red.

EIGHT POINT SEVEN!

Last year, Elgin received approximately 15.3 inches the entire year.

Now it's only Feb 19, and we've received over half that amount already.

'Buff Beauty's' unusually pallid first bloom (trying to make a cultivar possessive is SUCH a pain.  You either end up with apostrophe congestion, which is the route I've chosen, or you have to lose the cultivar's single quotes altogether.  Dammit.)

Since the climate scientists who study La Niña are still, oddly, predicting a dry winter (what's left of it), this is probably a good thing; though, perversely, the persistent wetness has actually begun to freak me out a little.  I had buried memories of the Horrid Fungus that carried off so many of our roses back in 2007, but now that the ground seems to be permanently soggy, I'm remembering how aggressive and lethal that strain of canker/dieback/whatever-it-was could be.

My first jonquils ever (Narcissus jonquilla) are in bloom!  Hooray for these plucky little specks of yellow!  Now each bulb needs to replicate itself about 10 times, and we'll actually have a decent-sized stand.

Still, everybody looks healthy so far, and there's no rain forecast for the next several days, so hopefully what we're getting here is a nice quenching, not a drowning.

Chinese sacred lilies (Narcissus tazetta v. chinensis), a cheerful and reliable bloomer for us here in Elgin.

And in the interim, we've got a lot of blooming and greening. Our "lawn" (mostly clover at present, but what the hell; I'm sure the soil could use the nitrogen fixation) is lush and bright, our little grape hyacinths are blooming, the cemetery irises and Chinese sacred lilies are just finishing up their bloom cycles, and the snowflakes and jonquils are just getting started.

Dear little grape hyacinth (Muscari neglectum).  These are very cute, but are also rather thin on the ground at the moment.  Here's hoping they spread.

'Georgetown Tea,' 'Ducher,' 'Climbing Old Blush,' and especially 'Archduke Charles' and 'Mutabilis' are all in flower, to varying degrees. It's bright and springy and balmy.

Two of "Georgetown Tea's" fat, nodding blossoms

'Ducher'--one of our more bloomful roses right now.  'Ducher' is such a nice intermediate between formality and casual rusticity.

One of my better pictures of 'Cramoisi Superieur.'  You've no idea how much trouble I've had with that shade of red.  It's still not right, but at least it's in the neighborhood.

 Since we're apparently committed to spring now, Matt & I bought 8 (EIGHT!) cubic yards of compost and spread it all over the place.  Between that and the rain, I'm expecting to see joyous, exuberant plant growth all over the damn place.  (Note that we've cut back the grasses since snapping the pic below.)

OMG--so much compost.

Good winter.  Nice winter.  More like this, please!

Another not-bad pic of 'Cramoisi Superieur'--it's a little darker with stronger purply undertones, but still--it's sort of like this.

Catalog of Roses (II)

'Green Ice'

I used to maintain a list of the roses in our garden, along with whatever interesting bits of info I could find about each cultivar.

But the format was clunky, and some of the info needed updating. So I'm making a new (improved!) version. The list below will (eventually) link to individual profiles containing details about each rose.

'Mlle. Franziska Kruger'

A
Abraham Darby (English - Chamblee's)
Alfie (Miniature - HelpMeFind trade 2012)

Archduke Charles (China - ARE 2010)

B
Belinda's Dream (Shrub - ?)

Buff Beauty (Hybrid Musk - ARE 1996)
Baretta St. Amber (Tea, found - Vintage Gardens, 2012)

C
Caldwell Pink (Found - found 2009(?))

Charles de Mills? (Gallica - ?)

Climbing Cecile Brunner (Polyantha - ARE)

Climbing Old Blush (China - ARE)

Clothilde Soupert (Polyantha - found 2009)

Comtesse du Cayla (China - ARE 1996)

Cramoisi Superieur (2- China - ARE 1996)

D
Dawn Star (Buck 2011)

Dick Koster (Polyantha - ? 2007)

Ducher (China - ? 2007)

Duchesse de Brabant (Tea - ? 2007)

 'Ferdinand Pichard'

E,F 
E. Veyrat Hermanos (Tea, Vintage Gardens 2012)
Ferdinand Pichard (Hybrid Perpetual - ARE 2011)

Fortune's Double Yellow (Species - ARE 2011)

Fourth of July (2 - Large-Flowered Climber - It's About Thyme 2008)

Francis Dubreuil (Tea - ?)

G
General Gallieni  (Tea, Vintage Gardens 2012)
Georgetown Tea (Found - ?)

Graham Thomas (English - ?)

Green Ice (3 - Miniature - Shoal Creek 2007)

Green Rose (China - ? 2011)

Gruss an Aachen (Hybrid Tea - Chamblee's 2011)

H
Hot Cocoa (Floribunda It's a Jungle 2011)

I
Isabella Sprunt (Tea - ? 2009)

J,K
Kaiserin Friedrich (Tea - mailorder 2009)

Kronprinzessin Viktoria (Bourbon - ARE 2011)

L
La Marne (Polyantha - ?)

Lichterloh (Hybrid Musk - ARE 1996)

M
Madame Alfred Carriere (Noisette - ARE 2008)

Maggie (2 - Found Bourbon - ?)

Marchesa Boccella (Hybrid Perpetual - HelpMeFind trade 2011) 
Margo Koster (Polyantha - HelpMeFind trade 2012)
Martha Gonzalez (Found China - ?)

Mlle. Franziska Kruger (Tea - ?)

Mrs. Dudley Cross (Tea - ARE 2011)

Mrs. R.M. Finch (Polyantha - ARE)

Mutabilis (5 - China - asst'd - 2007-2008)

N
New Dawn (Large-Flowered Climber)

'Old Blush, Cl.'

O,P
Paul Neyron (Hybrid Perpetual)
Puerto Rico? (cream-colored tea [Tea? - found 2009])

Q,R
Red Smith's Parish (Bermuda Tea, Vintage Gardens 2012)
Reine des Violettes (Hybrid Perpetual - ARE 1996)Rhodologue Jules Gravereaux (Tea, Vintage Gardens, 2012)
"not-Rise'n'Shine" (2 - Miniature - found 2009)

S
Sharifa Asma (English - Chambee 2011)

Sombreuil (Large-Flowered Climber - It's a Jungle 2011)

Souvenir de la Malmaison (Bourbon - ?)
Speedy Gonzales (Cl. China -?)

Spice (Found/Bermuda - Chamblee 2011)

T
The Ambridge Rose (English - Chamblee 2011)

The Fairy (Polyantha - unkn 2007)

U,V,W
Wedding Cake (Floribunda - Burlington 2011)

Wild Blue Yonder (Grandiflora - It's A Jungle 2007)

Winecup (Found - ARE 2011)

X,Y,Z
Zephirine Drouhin (Bourbon - HelpMeFind trade - 2010)

'Sombreuil'

Updated 27 Dec 2012

How'd It Get to Be August So Soon?

Pastures are toasted, there have been cigarette fires on the median strips, and our "lawn" is a brown dust bowl. Apparently, we've skipped May, June, and July, opted not to pass "Go," and landed straight in August.

BAD climate! Naughty, naughty climate!

Here's NOAA's assessment of our current state of drought (we're at the pink cross of dismay, a hop, skip, and a jump away from the maroon tide of doom):



And thanks to that bitch La Niña, it doesn't look like things are going to improve till fall at the earliest.

But it is not all dust and ashes here at Chez M. This picture nicely captures a number of new developments, positive and otherwise.

1. This is one of the few blooming roses left in the yard, newcomer 'Hot Cocoa,' a modern grandiflora that is a weird nifty combination of orange, pink, brown, and purple.
2. We just added some Mexican feathergrass to the grass-n-roses bed.
3. One of our lawn's many dead patches. It's so dead in the back yard that bare dirt is exposed.
4. We really need to buy a gate to hide the working area of the yard. Ah, money. Why aren't you made of rubber?
5. We added some more metal edging to the grass-n-roses bed, so it's looking slightly less disreputable. Still need about 11 more pieces :-(
6. Lotus 'Mrs. Perry D. Slocum' is back! Yay lotus!
7. New dwarf lotus 'Momo Botan' is having a rather slow start. Hang in there, little buddy.
8. We got the waterfall going! We need a bigger pump! And we need to hide the tubing!
9. Half the lights around the pond stopped working, and installing new light bulbs doesn't help. WTF??

Here's a closeup of 'Hot Cocoa'--the color's not exactly right, but you can kind of get the idea.

A couple more newbie roses: 'Red Fountain' and 'Wedding Cake.' And the watering system that gives them hope of survival despite La Niña.


The full list of new roses is:

1. Puerto Rico
2. Marchesa Bochella
3. Zepherine Drouhin
4. Mystery whitish rose with small flowers
5. Green rose
6. Wedding Cake
7. Hot Cocoa
8. Perle d'Or
9. Chestnut rose

Also on the list of good things, it's Crinum powellii season. We've got them all over the place, and they're helping to fill in the void left at the end of Peak Rose. Here they're trying to eat our back stoop.

The Big Picture

My friend Kate said she wanted to see holistic sort of pictures of the yard. Seems kind of appropriate, since the last post was all closeups of roses.

But the awkward thing with photographs is that sometimes what looks really big and significant in real life looks small and puny and uninteresting in a picture. Especially at 7:00 in the morning. So you'll just have to trust me when I tell you our garden is fat with blossoms and is confettied in red, white, and pink petals. Even if you can't quite see if from the pictures.

You can't see them, but 'Fourth of July' is bursting with crimson flowers, and 'Cramoisi Superieur' is covered with blooms. It looks really pretty. Honest.

Still, at least you can see the front walkway that we (especially Matt) spent so much time on. Though it also looks better--more proportional and better integrated--in real life. Dammit.

And here's the whole house. Even if you can't see the flowers, you can tell that everything--bushes, trees, roses--is bigger and greener and plumper than ever before. So that's nice.

Even the color of the walkway is off--it matches better in real life. Geez Louise.

Last year's 'Cascade Falls' weeping baldcypress is leafing out nicely, even if it isn't much bigger. The 2-year-old chitalpa, on the other hand, is about 3 times taller than when we first planted it two years ago. Glory be, those things haul ass.

Finally, you can sort of kind of see some color--those pink dots at the foot of the chitalpa are our 'Archduke Charles' chinas, planted in the fall, I think, and already blooming their fool heads off.

See? This is exactly what I'm talking about. When I look at the rose bed, I see roses everywhere. When I look at this picture, I see a sickly expanse of lawn rimmed with some insignificant frowzy things that are mostly green.

WTF?!?

Okay, here's a rose that rarely disappoints. Mutablis. It's covered in a kind of festival of blooms. Not as intense as in real life, but you get the gist. When the Mutabilis hedge gets like this, it reminds me of some sort of medieval fair--the kind that probably never really happened, but scifi/fantasy writers like to imagine--different colored banners snapping in the breeze, lush green grass, brightly colored pavilions, ladies in flowy red and blue and purple silk gowns and men in kelly green tunics and hose--and everything colored with the intensity and clarity of stained glass. Very pretty, very bright and clean and spring-like, and just a wee bit gaudy.

Thank you, Mutabilis

And now for something quite sad: several months ago, some jerkoffs from the phone company decided to prune our trees (and only our trees, I might add, no one else's--conspiracy?). They literally halved our unfortunate ash by the garage (am thinking of pollarding--poor bastard--that's all it's good for now). But worst of all, they took an indiscriminate chainsaw to our 60+ year old pecan. Planted by Mr. M's long-deceased father.

The poor scalped thing now looks like this:

Several years ago, we had a tree pruner out to estimate doing our yard (I think he quoted $1200--ouch). I asked particularly about this tree, but he said that since it was just phone lines, the utility company was unlikely to mess with the tree. And then the business that I worked for closed, so I shelved any arboristy plans indefinitely. Now that we've got a couple of multiple amputees, I suppose we have no choice but to cough up the $1500+ and have the poor things taken care of. Ug. Not a good time for that sort of expense, what with the state budget being how it is and jobs being slashed left and right. Still, if we have to go live in a cardboard box, at least we will have done our duty at tree stewards before being evicted.

Spring: An Ambivalent Appreciation

Spring is so complicated. My allergies have been bad enough to completely incapacitate me after yardwork two Sundays running, and Claritin can't begin to keep up. On the other hand, everything is so wonderfully densely green and juicy and pulsing with vitality. I can't decide if I hate or love this time of year.

Meanwhile, roses are popping into bloom all over the place. 'Fourth of July' is putting on its first buds. Matt, who hates moderns, grumbles about this viciously thorny rose a lot, so I'm doubly glad to see it bodying forth its streaky red awesomeness. FOJ: more than just a bad-ass lethal ninja weapon.

'Fourth of July'

'Madame Alfred Carriere' is just starting to bloom up on the gazebo. It's sporting a number of foamy pink blossoms, although when it comes to the gazebo, the flower bedizened 'Climbing Old Blush' is really where it's at right now. OB's individual flowers, though, can't compare to the delicacy and refinement of Mme AC's.

'Madame Alfred Carriere'

'Isabella Sprunt,' which is a comparatively new addition to the garden (planted last fall, I think), has put out a number of its unusually long, narrow buds, which prefigure the elongated buds of the hybrid teas. They open to pretty pale lemon blossoms.

'Isabella Sprunt'

Both of the 'Archduke Charles' that we planted last year are sporting many Valentine-colored pink-on-pink flowers. Part of me finds this combination a little too twee, but most of me thinks the overall effect is rather spectacular. Look at all those flowers on this little bitty shrub!

'Archduke Charles'

And then there's 'Sombreuil,' a big favorite of my husband's. We're growing it on one of the new trellises for privacy around the pond, and we ended up buying a rather expensive 5-gallon from It's a Jungle that had been trained up a plant stake. At the time, we weren't very happy about this, but it was the only 'Sombreuil' in town. Once we got it uncoiled and woven into the trellis, though, it was obvious that the extra $20 or so was totally worth it. It already fills out the trellis nicely, and it immediately popped into bloom, with several large, densely petaliferous, fragrant disk-like flowers.

'Sombreuil'

So that's spring in Central Texas: bursting with loveliness and color... that I can only see through bleary, itchy, inflamed eyes.

First Roses & Other Spring Things

First Mutabilis blossom

We're starting to see the first roses of the season: two Chinas and a Polyantha, which makes sense (Chinas being one of the more rugged and floriferous classes of roses for Texas).

Our 'Mutabilis' hedge is looking incredibly dense and leafy and vigorous, and it's sporting one of the season's first blooms.

'Climbing Old Blush' bloomed heavily last spring and only indifferently after that, which is a bit unusual for this cultivar. I think a lot of roses bloomed so hard last spring that they wore themselves out and had to take the summer off. I'm not sure if I should be encouraged or not by the 5 or 6 blossoms COB is already sporting this March. Pace yourself, old thing. You don't want to fizzle in June.

The dense foliage and precocious flowers of 'Climbing Old Blush.'

And 'La Marne' has produced its first two flowers. LM ended up in our garden in some happenstancical way, and even though it's a doughty and productive rose, I can't seem to fall in love with it. The color, the flower shape, the flower size--it's all kind of meh. Still. Flowers are a nice thing. So carry on.

I do not love all my children equally. The neglected polyantha 'La Marne.'

Our trees are a good bit more cautious than our roses. Sophora affinis, X Chitalpa taskentensis, and Quercus polymorpha are all leafing out, but the others are either just at the swollen bud stage or else slumber on. Our s....l....o....w.... growing Ginkgo biloba has endearingly snubby little fat buds that are just starting to green up.

The fat little buds of the Ginkgo biloba

And our crinum are leafing out. They all appear to have survived the freezes: the 'Peachblow', 'Pink Parfait', and (oh, I always forget her name--Pauline Something, maybe?) that Matt gave me for Christmas, all the C. macowannii seedlings scattered around, the C. jagus and C. jagus scillifolia, the tentatively identified C. digweedii, the two red scabrums, the C. powelliis--white and pink--and the many 'Ellen Bosanquets' we have about the yard. The C. powelliis by the study door sort of glued themselves together to the top during our last freeze and I never cleaned them up; now their leaves are weirdly conjoined at the tips.

Crinum powelliis with their leaves glued together

And lastly, a perverse sort of a sign of spring, all the nasty old ligustrums that suffered freeze damage this winter are cutting their losses and dropping their necrotic leaves. I think the pattern of colors on this one is really rather pretty.

A dying ligustrum leaf

Roses of Interest

I'm making a list of roses I covet. It's a long list.

Queen Victoria-related:
My dissertation (in what now seems like another lifetime) had to do with Queen Victoria, so I'd like to collect at least a few of the scores of plants named in her honor.

Reine Victoria (#1 - Tea, light yellow; 1837 - Vissley Vandaël, Paris, France - lost?)
Queen Victoria (#1 - Hybrid Perp, mauve; 1840 - Laffay, France)
Queen Victoria (#2 -Tea, salmon; 1844 — M. Bélot-Défougère, France - aka 'Souvenir d'un Ami')
Queen Victoria (#3 -Hybrid Perp, white/pink; 1850 - Fontaine/A. Paul, United Kingdom - aka 'La Reine à fleurs blanches' - lost?)
Queen Victoria (#4 - Hybrid Perp, white/blend; ca.1860- Jacques-Julien, Jules Margottin Père & Fils, France - aka 'White La Reine' Is this truly different from the one above? Lost?)
La Reine Victoria (#2 - Bourbon, carmine pink; 1872 - Joseph Schwartz, France - aka 'The Shell Rose')
Queen Victoria (#5 - Tea, light pink; 1872 - Eugène Labruyére - lost?)

On the left, the one 'La Reine Victoria' that is reliably commercially available today (Schwartz, 1872--pic from Apuldram Roses), and on the right, a cartoon from early in Victoria's reign, depicting her as "The Rose of England"

Kronprinzessin Viktoria (Bourbon, cream/yellow - 1888 - Vollert/Späth?, Germany - aka 'Yellow Souvenir de la Malmaison')

'Kronprinzessin Viktoria' - pic by frederic on helpmefind.com.

This is one I particularly want: 'Kronprinzessin Viktoria,' named for the queen's eldest daughter. It's the ivory-colored sport of the fabulous 'Souvenir de la Malmaison.' We've already got one rose named for this same individual in our garden: 'Kaiserin Friedrich,' which is the title she took when her husband, Friedrich, became the German emperor.

Other Long-Desired:
Fortune's Double Yellow ( species, yellow/copper/salmon; bef.1845 - Robert Fortune, UK)
Abraham Darby (shrub, apricot; 1985 - Austin, UK [AUScot])
Ballerina (Hybrid Musk, pink/white; 1937 - Bentall, UK)
Basye's Purple (rugosa, mauve; 1968 - Basye, US)
Basye's Blueberry (shrub, pink; 1982 - Basye, US)
Chestnut Rose (species, pink; R. roxburghii, Asia)
Eglantine Rose (species, light pink; R. sylvestris odora, Europe)
Green Rose (China, green; bef.1845, disc. Bambridge & Harrison, China)
Madame Hardy (Alba/Centifolia/Damask, white; 1832, Eugene/Julien-Alexandre Hardy, France, aka 'Felicite Hardy'. Extreme blackspot resistance)
Madame Plantier (China/Noisette[??], white; 1835, Plantier, France, aka 'The Bride's Rose')
Spice (Bermuda/China, white)
White Pearl in Red Dragon's Mouth (China, red w occasional white streaks; aka 'Chi Long Han Zhu')
Winecup (found rose, burgundy--put at Cl Cecile Brunner's feet)

Teas
Maman Cochet (light pink; 1892 - Scipion Cochet, aka "Mrs Morgan's Delight")
Mrs BR Cant (deep pink; 1901 - Benjamin R Cant & Sons, aka 'Mrs Benjamin R Cant')
Adam (pale pink; 1838 - Adam, Rheims, France, aka 'President')
Gloire de Dijon (Tea Noisette, pale salmon/pink; 1850 - Henri Jacotot, France, aka 'Glory John')
Général Galliéni (dark pink to yellow; 1899 - Gilbert Nabonnand, France)
Madame Wagram, Comtesse de Turenne (pink; 1894 - Alexandre Bernaix, France)
Perle des Jardins (yellow; 1874 - Antoine Levet, pere, France)
Tipsy Imperial Concubine (pink blend; 1982 - Hazel le Rougetel, found China)
Clementina Carbonieri (salmon/pink/yellow; 1913 - Gaetano Bonfiglioli & figlio, Italy)
Francis Dubreuil (dark red; 1894, Francis Dubreuil, France [in US, probably actually 'Barcelona'])
English Roses
Gentle Hermione (alternate: Queen of Sweden)
Tradescant (alternate: Falstaff)
A Shropshire Lad
Abraham Darby
Jude the Obscure
Crocus Rose (alternate: Glamis Castle)


Other
Hot Cocoa (brownish orange/red, Floribunda; 2003 - Carruth (Weeks) )
Honey Dijon (tan/yellow Grandiflora; 2005 - Sproul (Weeks))
Pearl d'Or (shrub; 1883 - Rambaux, Dubreuil, France)
Mme. Pierre Oger (Bourbon, pale pink; 1878 - Verdier, France)

Awesome Freaky Rose

A couple of days ago, I wondered on this blog which roses would end up populating our still-in-progress pond beds.

The answer came a little sooner than expected: deliciously weird floribunda 'Wedding Cake' (Ralph Moore, 2006).

It's rather rare, but Rogue Valley Roses offered it as wait-listed. It wasn't much of a wait, though, because I signed up yesterday and got an email offering the rose today. I hadn't actually meant to commit quite so soon, but what the hell.

Here's one of the very few pictures I was able to find online:

Photo posted by the_dark_lady on gardenweb. You can see a few more pix at helpmefind.com

Isn't it nifty, with those odd greeny undertones near the center?

It is a modern (that sound you hear in the background is Matt pretending to gag--he doesn't think much of moderns) and a relative unknown, so it's a bit of a risk, but as rose dorks I think we have a responsibility toward the peculiar and fabulous. And I, for one, do my duty.