Ingrid, you have such a pretty and interesting garden. I'm tossing up about getting Mrs BR Cant. I've read that the bush is untidy, but that bloom is gorgeous. Would you recommend her?
Trish.

Lovely, Ingrid. We have had freezing and near freezing temps for the past several days.

Ingrid,

Inspiring! I love the Italian Cypress! How is Mme. Cornelissen? It looks like a beautiful plant.

Josh

Bishops Castle is looking good! I don't have anything so delicious looking right now so thanks for sharing these beauties.

I wanted to ask you, do you have any that are just on the fringe of being too shaded and are still getting enough sun to keep blooming? I am trying this to see if I can water less and still get roses. The ones that are successful do not get the petals fried except in the 95+ temps.

Very pretty, but it does look dry, and I hope you get rain. I sure wish we could swap climates for a while.
Melissa

So many beautiful roses! What I really miss right now is the stock...it's so pretty and makes me think of spring. We can transplant it before the last frost (with alyssum) but it's becoming difficult to find. I might start my own from seeds this year.

The squirrel and quail picture is wonderful :)

What type of fragrance is there with Bishop's Castle? I'm looking for a few more roses for mom...thanks!

Trish, my two Mrs. B.R. Cant roses are open, rangy plants, and I have a feeling it will take some more years for them to fill in. I certainly don't regret having them since the rose is a willing bloomer, does well in the heat and doesn't get mildew (or any other disease for that matter) as some of my other teas have.

Josh, I'm glad you like the cypresses. As you probably know Mme. Cornelissen is a sport of Souvenir d'un Ami but as a whole hasn't done quite as well, although part of that may have been due to location. I think it has charming flowers and have made an effort to baby it a bit since some of its canes have died off.

Kitty the only rose I have that's in a shady location (just a little morning sun in winter) is Mutabilis and it doesn't seem bothered at all. Spice is also pretty shady and keeps blooming on.

Yes, Melissa, I'm sure you can tell that it's much drier than before. My biggest worry is not losing the roses but rather the relatively few trees that we have. Hopefully there will still be some precipitation this winter.

Lavenderlass, I got my stock from Home Depot and wish I had gotten a few more. This one's been blooming for several months. I have no idea what happens to it in the summer heat but I'm sure I'll find out. I'm terrible at describing rose fragrances, but I can say that it doesn't smell like myrrh or have the "beery" smell of Souvenir de la Malmaison. To me it just has a rich, lovely true rose fragrance and I'm afraid that's about as specific as I can get.

This morning as I was at work my husband had just gone outside to give a snack to Braveheart and well over a hundred quail, many more than we've ever seen before, were gathered by the birdbath and over the hillside. I wish I'd been there to enjoy that.

Ingrid

Well those were all gorgeous, Ingrid, and much welcomed on a gray snowy day, thanks!

mmmm, I got all excited by a stock too (can almost smell it in my imagination). This has been a very odd winter - no snow, just damp and grey, rain and more dampness - seems so unfair that you are frizzling to bits while we are drowning.....but there are some strange anomalies, even a couple of fugitive blooms awaiting me at the allotment.
A single Nahema

even weirder - Summer Song

finally, a little vista of the January allotment - a very mild winter, but wet, with storm after storm - we are somewhat battered and shaken.

Camp, I see you garden in sexy red gloves. Who'd have thought? It's very strange to think of anyone in England having roses in what should be the depth of winter. Nahema is really very pretty. Summer Song (strangely out of season with its name) looks extremely in sinc with your gloves.

I'm a little puzzled. Will you be keeping your allotment in addition to your home garden and the woodland paradise? Sounds like mucho work to this couch potato.

Ingrid

I'm a little puzzled too, Ingrid, in a permanent limbo of hurtling between wood, allotment and home, as well as keeping the household afloat. All plans have gone out of the window, we are literally winging it by the minute. When the gardens are overwhelming, I get right close to the soil and concentrate on a tiny little patch, say a square metre. All becomes much clearer and much more do-able. I am applying this method to my entire life.

Ingrid and Camp, it's nice to see these photos. I love the quail. We have quail here that like to hide in the ramblers. Nothing will ever hurt the Italian Cypresses. I am so glad for the ones I have planted here.

Lovely photos, Ingrid. Your garden is a slice of paradise! You are responsible for my big conversion to pink roses, you know. I have been making a post driveway break-up dream list for someday. Lo and behold, everything on the list is some shade of pink! :-) I noticed you referred to a studio in your photos. Art studio that produces some of those wonderful pieces in your home? Love the quail pics!

Suzy, we too are having a very wet and mild winter. Our weather often echoes yours, though we haven't had the storms--thank goodness. Our roses are still blooming a bit too, which surprises me, though not as much as seeing you with blooms. The last I saw the forecast is for more of the same. The buds on my japonica camelia are showing color, and I thought I saw the buds on an almond in an advanced state. This is not good in January.
Melissa

Yeah, I have been spraying the almonds and peaches against the curl (A futile exercise, given the continuous rain) - holding no hopes of anything much from the fruits, this year - the cherries especially are going to be a bit rubbish, although the currants will always come good with some sort of crop. Even more annoying is the requirement to deleaf the roses - there is no way we are going into spring carrying the present fungal load, so it is a boring defoliation business at present.

On the plus side, my silty soil simply releases even the largest weeds with little more than a gentle tug (and a horrid slurping sound) - slip out as easy as a oiled mink in a drainpipe. The compost heaps are massive.

Pam, I've been a bit worried about the cypresses regarding the drought. Do you think they'll be all right?

Carol, the "studio" is a 900 square-foot structure with a bathroom that's filled with furniture and other stuff that didn't fit in our home when we combined households. Originally it was meant as a studio, but my husband has given up painting, although we do have quite a few of his things in the house. It's easier to call it the studio than "the small house filled with all our junk" and sounds just a bit classier.

I'm thrilled that I turned you on to pink roses. There are so many different shades, not to mention differing shapes, that I at least never tire of pink roses. They also blend happily with many other colors, even my bright yellow irises.

Ingrid

Ingrid and Campanula, thanks for posting your garden pics. They brighten a cold day....

The quails are cute! I like stock, it's a lovely companion for the roses.

I loved seeing your roses, cypress, and quail. Just hearing about your studio set my mind racing about turning the structure into a quaint garden retreat--oh, the possibilities. I have to mention that I have a "herd" of quail that I feed everyday, along with many other birds. I regard them as Quail TV because they're one of the craziest, most entertaining birds I observe. And I do put up with a lot for this bit of TV--devoured seedlings, every seed sown by me or some poor plant gobbled down, and those dust bowls they make all over the place. Still nothing is funnier than watching a quail mom teaching her babies how to "dust" in their own little bowls. Diane

Thank you Krista. I hope you enjoyed being transported to a much warmer place.

Diane, I'd love to see the babies in their "dust bowl". Our quail are quite shy and I've never seen a dust bowl here. They use our property as a commuter route every day, drink from the bird bath and some sleep in one of the pepper trees, but they won't let us get very near. The road runners are another story, they seem to like it when we talk to them although we can't feed them unless we could find live snails, snakes and lizards for them to eat. I don't think so.....

Ingrid

"My" quail are still quite shy, so I just quietly observe. Nearly every year we have a mama quail hatch her family in one of my flower beds. Within a day or two, we'll see her marching the babies in a line behind her, down the hill to the draw where they will live permanently in the brush. It's adorable, I have to say. Diane