Still Life with...

Doesn't everyone have a stump covered in rocks and...glittery bouncy balls...on their coffee table, with, say, a vase of Alchemilla mollis nearby? A shaft of morning sunlight transformed it all into something ethereal as I ran out the door today. Won't find this in a Dutch masterpiece, but I'm not much for dead pheasants anyways.

Still glorifying roses...

Two weeks ago, the yellow 'Graham Thomas' rose in the background got most of the glory in Anne and Peter's garden. This week, the foreground rose, 'Sunset...something' (it's coming to me...) is so beautiful we're wondering when Canon cameras will record scent. Anne figures we've broken some design rule, having a tall rose at the front of a bed, but all the better to sniff it.

Below, the panicles of a Hydrangea paniculata ('Kyushu' or a similiar cultivar) are just about to open behind 'Sunset...something' (my, I'm on top of my names tonight). The important botanical fact is that these rose cultivars are descended from old-fashioned roses; therefore, they tend to retain authentic qualities like fragrance and robustness, instead of sacrificing them for bred-for-market qualities such as repeat-bloom and wedding-cake-perfect-petals.

From the top step of the door stoop...

2010, The Year of The Big Bloom, recorded for posterity.

Summer-thyme

A bee's-eye view...

Considering that the flowers of Geranium cinereum (below) are one inch across, this little lady is a lot smaller than I thought at the time.

So many dimensions in a garden :)

What's behind your roses?

I've never understood the concept of formal rose gardens, where a hundred varieties compete for attention in geometric beds. For one thing, it's like being at a Calvin Klein convention: everyone's beautiful, so no one in particular stands out (such a drag). For another, rose blossoms are attractive but the plants themselves tend to be prickly and gawky. So I'm more in favour of interplanting roses with plants that soften and complement the dee-luxury of roses.



Here's the 'Joseph's Coat' climber by my front door, with California lilac (Ceanothus) and Achillea 'Moonshine' below, and a variegated ivy growing up around the post.



In Anne's garden, below, an un-named own-root cultivar unfolds in front of Choisya 'Sundance' and red valerian (Centranthus ruber).




Also in Anne's garden, this 'Graham Thomas' is a stand-out in front of the black-leafed elderberry, Sambucus 'Black Beauty'.

I took the picture below by holding the camera up over my head. Graham's outgrown the six-foot rebar frame Peter constructed last year!





And finally (until the next 'round of blooms anyways), here's a silvery display of a white 'Iceberg' rose in front of billowing Mexican hair grass (Stipa tenuissima) in Rojeanne and Jim's garden.

Japanese Irises in The Swale

Wow. The white Japanese irises (Iris ensata) in Sheena and Terry's garden (in the swale-to-be) are busting out in full bloom. This is significant because we watched them dwindle away in the lower garden, where I now submit they were gradually overwhelmed by cedar roots. We were starting to talk nostalgically about the last time they bloomed.

Japanese irises are particlularly gorgeous and unusual because the blooms are flat.

Then, last year, I transplanted them into the new beds out front, where we are transforming the gravel pit into a swale garden (see entry on May 18 2010). They definitely have wet feet out here, since the water table reaches the surface this time of year. And they love it.

Here's the before-shot, from this May:

And here's one month's growth, in this crazy wet year:

That's a white hydrangea on the far left, followed by the white variegated leaf of the redtwig dogwood, Cornus sericea. There's a human leg, for scale, in the pic below.