Baby picture!

What's cuter than a baby picture?

Aw.... the widdle cutie pie! Sooooo sweet!

Here's the proud mama, the daughter of the first hybrid I ever made, a cross between the wonderful native US swamp rose, Rosa palustris and a beautiful rugosa rose hybrid called 'Apart'. She's an incredibly tough little lady, a vigorous, incredibly thorny bush that laughs at disease and, thanks to the fact her grandmother lived in a bog, thrives in heavy, poorly drained clay soil. In contrast to her tough-as-nails constitution, all summer long she unveils these delicate, fragrant, exquisitely crafted flowers that I adore.

This is the daddy, the classic, and classy, rose 'Golden Wings' one of my favorites with pale yellow blooms on a large, vigorous bush.

I'm so proud to welcome their first child into the world! More should be popping up soon, and I can't wait to see what they look like and how they grow. So much beauty and anticipation packed into a tiny speck of green!

Seedling's first flower!

Well, at long last, the first flower of my little rose seedling has opened!

Its mother looks like this:

And the daddy looks like this and boast the strongest fragrance of any rose I know:

And here is the first flower of their little baby:

It is a bit scruffy looking, but that will probably change as it matures. The first flower of a new rose seedling usually has fewer petals than the blooms from a mature plant, and the extra petals can significantly change the form and look of the overall bloom.
The good news is that the fragrance is outstanding! To my nose, almost as strong as its delightful father, which is saying something.

This cross resulted in about what I had expected, but that isn't always the case. Whenever you make a cross, odd, unexpected stuff pops out. Sometimes it is good, sometimes not so much. But I got lucky this time with one of my other seedlings from the same cross. It germinated much later, so no flowers yet, but it has stunningly lovely blue-grey leaves, very very like Rosa glauca. Totally unexpected color, and very welcome! I can't wait to see what the flowers look like. Probably pink, like its sibling, but it could be different. In any case, I'll have to cross it with a bunch of my other favorite roses. Wouldn't a dark, rich, smoldering red flower look stunning on a bush of those leaves?

The mystery, discovery, and joy of breeding roses

All my roses are covered with different colored strings!

Why strings? Because, after nearly a decade, I've become re-interested in rose breeding, and all those little strings are marking developing hips I pollinated over the past couple weeks.

Roses were my first love when I got seriously into gardening and breeding as a teenager, but somehow the romance faded and I focused on other things. The, last year, on a whim, I made a couple crosses between some of my very favorite roses. And once I had seedlings germinating, all the excitement and joy of the relationship when it was new came flooding back, and I knew I had to start crossing them again.

Now I've got this, perhaps the most exciting thing there is in the world. The first bud on a seedling rose. Inside that tiny bud is a flower, never been seen before in the world. I'm hoping, hoping, it will be fragrant  and richly colored, but I don't know. No one knows. This new rose awaits discovery. And next year, I'll have LOTS more mysterious new roses unveiling their unique beauty for the first time before my eyes. Ah, the JOY of rose breeding!

The best smelling rose in the world

Perhaps I should just say the best smelling rose my nose has ever encountered. Which is still saying something. I used to be minorly obsessed with roses (in my teens... I sort of grew out of it) and have spent a lot of time sniffing the over 11,000 rose bushes in the Columbus Ohio Park of Roses when I lived in that town. Sniffing through that collection, and every other collection of roses I have come across, nothing comes close to the scent of Madam Ernst Calvat.
Not only is her scent strong (when she is in full bloom, I can smell her easily several yards away at the other end of the garden) but it is marvelous and evocative. I showed a flower to a friend once, and after inhaling deeply, she said, "Wow... that really... takes you places, doesn't it?" Smells are always hard to describe, but to me it is a wild, exotic, smell. Not quite floral, not quite incense, completely marvelous.
If you don't know the good madam, here is what she looks like in my garden:

She's a hybrid perpetual, and like most hybrid perpetuals (indeed, like most roses) she is a gawky, rangy sort of shrub, inclined to get mildew. Which is why, if you look closely in the picture you can see strawberries growing at her feet, and onions in the background. Roses to me are for putting in vases, so I grow them with my other cut flowers out back with the vegetables.

Here she is looking as she should, in a vase, with some Phlox 'Chattahoochee' filling the house with her incredible scent.

I just wish you could smell it too, through your computer screen. It would set you dreaming.