Lady Emma Hamilton:

Claire Austin:

Claire Austin - sometimes less is more:

Charles Darvin:

Compassion:

The Prince:

Luna: (I think this time he has abandoned us ... he has been gone for almost 15 min. now! Going to ignore him from now on):

Lady Emma Hamilton again:

Blossomtime:

The cats are not bad either ;-)!

Ingrid

It's a toss up which is more beautiful, your Himalayan or Lady Emma Hamilton.

Running to the Austin catalog now to see how big Lady Emma gets? Can I fit it in?

Debbie

Juliet

Sherry

Ingrid - I am still recovering from being sick with pneumonia since april, been very sick all summer. I really like LEH - it is a great looking garden plant too. Blossomtime is one of my favorite roses for fragrance and cutting (long vase life). It gets mildew so badly here and even spraying does not stop it. So I just let them grow in my cutting garden - it still produces lots of flowers all summer long into the fall. To My nose Charles Darvin is not that fragrant ...

Debbie - I hope you can fit LEH into your garden. It is a nice rose and blooms better than pat Austin for me.

Juliet. I love roses, especially fully double fragrant roses. Claire Austin is doing well and does not seem to become one of the bigger Austins here. A compact twiggy Shrub Rose. It repeats well but the flowers shatter quickly and they are not as fragrant as E.I The Pilgrim - but the fragrance is very similar.

Sherry Blossomtime is soo pretty - I really like the darker reverse of the petals and they are very sweetly fragrant. Whether it will do well in your climate, I do not know.

Your roses are gorgeous-

Love LEH---she is a beauty

Love the natural look of your bouquets----

Compassion is one of my favorites and that is a great picture.

Love your furbabies----

Please be well !!!

Florence

I have to say again that I find your casual bouquets perfectly arranged, but I can understand that you would like to know more about the art of arranging flowers. It is a lot of fun to learn how to display roses to their best advantage.

Christina

Randy

Randy

400 roses: you might as well just put a little sign that says "heaven" on the gate.

Glad your feeling better!

robert

Connie

Thanks to all of you for your good wishes.

Joe white/cream roses truly are pretty. Now If I could only make Kronprinzessin Victoria grow a little better here. Yours always look gorgeous.

I love the cats. They are like two rivals constantly fighting for my attention and are jealous of each other, if I pet one the other looks offended. If I go outside in the garden they constantly look for me out the windows. One is a Holy Birman, the other a Siamese, like Connie wrote.

Christina - It is so great to have a cutting garden! I learned how to graft/t-bud roses and now produce most of my plants myself and greatly increased the number of roses - I even got a new small plot of land nearby so I can grow even more roses! It is so overgrown with weeds and I look forward growing more roses there:

A blank canvas

I do not spray the roses in my other plot and only prune them in the spring and deadhead a few times during the summer. Since they grow no spray I really learn which roses have good disease resitance here. This summer I got a lot of rust though on roses that always have been clean for me - and Randy - Heritage was one of them!!! Never seen that before - a little mildew but never rust this bad. I have a lot of cleanup to do and I might have to spray with a neem/copper/sulfur spray when they go dormant and cut the canes more back to get rid of as many spores as I can.

It is great to learn what roses do really well for cutting. Some begin to drop petals after just one day, while others do not drop their petals but look tired after a few days. They either have a good vase life or be very fragrant - preferably both of course.

I think most can make plonks of roses - but I really suck at it! Huge fragrant plonks with up to 20-30 stems of e.I. Austin roses really fill my rooms with perfume and I always have smaller vases all over the house with about 5 rose stems in each - Just Looked - counted 6 vases on my bedside table (Papa Meilland, Crimson Glory, Rouge Royal (last very long!! but produces so few flowers) Paul McCartney Rose, and Frederic Mistral and Blossomtime). The scent is amazing - when I lie in my bed - Ready - Wooopss - Reading - in my bed. And I always fall asleep drifting away feeling the wafting scent of some very fragrant roses. (at least 5 month every year I enjoy that luxury).

I have begun collecting many different sizes of vases mostly glass, but also a few silver and ceramic vases. Seems I can't get enough of different smaller vases.

Randy - sure you may use the picture(s) I post If you like it. When posted publically it is hard to control the use of images (Fair use) - if any want to use some of my images for something - all they have to do is ask. I never say no to private websites, bloggers and authors. I had picture of "Cloris" published in ARS old garden journal last spring and some of my images garden images have been published in books. Even though I am not very skilled taking pictures and don´t have to work them in Photoshop (will take a course this winter - got the CS4, but don't have clue how to use it. I need to take more images in RAW format in the future, and will spend some on better lenses as I able to afford new ones.

I simply keep putting of taking flowerarranging classes - I just know I am going to be the only man there ... I wrote an article on my blog about it:

Flowerarranging for Men?

I know how to grow roses and it is a luxury to be able to take in huge plonks of roses, I just need to learn to arrange them better and use different fillers to present them better. Then I may take pictures of something else than plonks like these above and these Heritage roses.

And Eden Roses:

Robert - LEH has really grown on me. And the dark colour of the buds, stems and leaves on new shoots are truly different and unique and make the blooms stand out beautifully. I also like the sweet fruity rose fragrance. And it has a nice growth habit too. I also look forward to try the new lady of Shalott. I have ordered 3 and time will tell if I like it. Hope you are doing well over their and that the Brits treat you good.

It is good to be back in better health and post again ... I hope you forgive me my lack of ability to make short posts and I have been a little cranky and sensitve since quitting (sorry Andrea).

With so many rose flowers in your house it must smell like heaven. I was just able to cut one bloom of Frederic Mistral and three of Pretty Jessica today and even those four rose flowers release a lot of fragrance, but of course they don't perfume the hole house.

The two new photos of the bouquets (I don't want to call them just plonks) of Heritage and Eden are awfully pretty, too! I am growing two Edens here in my South CA garden, and even though they can attract a lot of rust at times, I love them very much. I have a small band of Heritage, which I hope will mature quickly so that I can get a small plonk of flowers from it, too!

Thanks for posting!

Christina