ROSEBUD

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

AUTUMN ROSE

A few roses in our garden are persisting to bloom, including this beauty, Rosa 'Mr Lincoln' a fragrant, showy rose.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

AUTUMN ROSE

With the second month of Autumn nearly over, our chrysanthemums have started to bloom profusely. A few roses persist to bloom and this fragrant pink beauty is an example, with golden chryssies in the background.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

ROSA 'PINK INTUITION'

Rosa 'Pink Intuition' is a sport of 'Red Intuition', which was voted International Cut Rose of the Year 2000. Like its sister rose, 'Pink Intuition' is prized for the perfection of its large, perfect, classical Hybrid Tea-shaped flowers, all massed with petals. Tall graceful buds open into blooms, a whirling palette of pinks – bright, rich, magentas slashed with delicate and buoyant pastels – stripes of pinks on pink.

Flowering continually from Spring to late Autumn, stems are laden with bunches of bright, unfading blooms. Long flower stems are ideal for cutting, having an exceptionally long vase life. Flowers do not droop. Blessed with a vigorous growth habit, Pink Intuition thrives in full sun, relishes regular feeding and mulching. Pink Intuition may be planted all the year round. Grows to approximately 150cms high.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

COSMIC ROSE

One of my photos digitally altered with Photoshop.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

JAPONICA

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

WINTER ROSES

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

JAPONICA

Chaenomeles japonica is a species of Japanese Quince in the Rosaceae family. It is a thorny deciduous shrub that is commonly cultivated. It is shorter than another commonly cultivated species C. speciosa, growing to only about 1 m in height. The fruit is called Kusa-boke (草木瓜) in Japanese. Chaenomeles japonica is also popularly grown in bonsai. 

It is best known for its colourful spring flowers of red, white or pink. It produces apple-shaped fruit that are a golden-yellow colour containing red-brown seeds. The fruit is edible, but hard and astringent-tasting, unless bletted. The fruit is occasionally used in jelly and pie making as an inferior substitute for its cousin, the true quince, Cydonia oblonga.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

AUTUMN ROSE

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

ROSE BOUQUET

Rose bouquet:  Red for love, pink for joy and white for secrecy...

CRABAPPLE

Malus is a genus of about 30–55 species of small deciduous apple trees or shrubs in the family Rosaceae, including the domesticated orchard apple (M. pumila). The other species are generally known as crabapples, crab apples, crabs, or wild apples. The genus is native to the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere.

Crabapples are popular as compact ornamental trees, providing blossom in Spring and colourful fruit in Autumn. The fruits often persist throughout Winter. Numerous hybrid cultivars have been selected, of which 'Evereste' and 'Red Sentinel' have gained The Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

Crabapples are small and sour tasting, and visually resemble a small apple, particularly some apples known as the "Lady Apple", which is also known as Pomme d'Api, Lady's Finger, Wax Apple and Christmas Apple. The tree shown here is the hybrid Malus × scheideckeri 'Exzellenz Thiel'.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme

AUTUMN ROSES

The days keep getting shorter and the rose bushes are full of rose hips and a few late blooming roses, saying a belated goodbye to Summer.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

GEUM

Geum commonly called avens, is a genus of about 50 species of rhizomatous perennial herbaceous plants in the Rosaceae family, widespread across Europe, Asia, North and South America, Africa, and New Zealand. They are closely related to Potentilla and Fragaria.

From a basal rosette of leaves, they produce flowers on wiry stalks, in shades of white, red, yellow, and orange, in midsummer. Geum species are evergreen except where winter temperatures drop below −18 °C. Geum species are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including the grizzled skipper.

The cultivars 'Lady Stratheden' (shown here), and 'Mrs J. Bradshaw' have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

'HOT COCOA' ROSE

'Hot Cocoa' rose was bred by Tom Carruth, USA, in 2001. Don't plant this beautiful rose at the back of your rose garden because you will miss the most unusual array of colours as the blooms start to flourish. Early in the season, the buds can be quite orange on the outer petals, however, the surprise is when the bud opens, the petals are distinctly brown and then as they age, they turn are dusky, muddy mauve. It is quite stunning at all stages and when the bush is in full bloom, the colour range is amazing.

'Hot Cocoa' is outstandingly disease-resistant with glossy, green foliage which adds to its unique beauty. The bush habit is rather upright and if pushed against a wall and wasn’t pruned, this bush would create quite a spectacular pillar rose. There’s no great perfume but Hot Cocoa is a highly recommended rose to plant for its unusual range of colours.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

AUTUMN ROSE

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

ROSA 'JUST JOEY'

Rosa 'Just Joey' was bred by Cants of Colchester, United Kingdom, in 1972. It was named for the wife of the Managing Director of Cants of Colchester, Joey Pawsey. This Hybrid Tea rose performs well throughout Australia and there are many fine specimens in Melbourne gardens, beginning with ours, where we have no less than four bushes of this variety!

The plant is vigorous and grows well, achieving a height of 1.5 m and width of 1.2 m. Flowers are borne one per stem and can be of an impressive size (up to 20cm in Spring and Autumn, slightly smaller during Summer). The bush is disease and heat resistant and tends to survive well with a little care.

The flower is an eye-catching ripe apricot colour with a loose, informal display of pretty frilled petals. Probably its most seductive feature is its intense, spicy fragrance which will quickly fill a room, when a bunch is placed in a vase. This perfume is inherited from its parents (Fragrant Cloud x Dr. A.J. Verhage) also renowned for their strong scent. It has been awarded the Royal Horticultural Society Award of Merit 1993 and World’s Favourite Rose 1994.When introduced, its colour and size of flowers were considered breakthroughs. This lovely rose is readily available and will reward and delight any rose lover!

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

GOLDEN CELEBRATION ROSE

'Golden Celebration' ™ (Ausgold) bred by David Austin is a delightful variety in their English Rose Collection. It is one of the largest-flowered and most magnificent of the English Roses. Its colour is rich golden yellow and the flowers are in the form of a giant, full-petalled cup. It has excellent shapely growth, forming a nicely rounded, slightly arching shrub with ample foliage.

It is very reliable and easy to grow. It is an ideal rose to mark any celebration or important event. The flowers are initially tea-scented but often develop a wonderful combination of sauterne wine and strawberry. It features repeat flowering and will benefit from summer pruning in most areas. This variety won the best shrub and most fragrant rose awards at the Rose Awards Day 2000.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

ROSE

The Sparrieshoop rose was bred by Reimer Kordes (Germany, 1953). It is a shrub rose producing many light pink blooms with a strong fragrance. The flowers are single with five petals, have long pointed buds, and an average diameter of 10 cm. Blooms in flushes throughout the season. A bushy, climbing, upright rose with dark green, leathery foliage. Height of 150 to 305 cm, width of 120 to 275 cm. This type of rose can be hopped to produce even more ample flowering.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

ROSE AND THORN

Never the rose without the thorn...

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme,
and also part of the Photo Sunday meme.

HOME

A fine old Edwardian house in Fairfield, an inner Melbourne suburb. Melbourne is full of many such houses, which unfortunately are becoming prizes for the shrewd property developers. Sitting on a sizeable block of land, enough for a decent front and back garden, this type of house is under threat of demolition and redevelopment of the land... Many such houses have been lost and in their place anything between 4-6 units have been built, overcrowding the neighbourhoods, increasing noise levels, traffic congestion, pollution and placing increasing demands on already heavily utilised infrastructure.

Let's stop and smell the roses while we still can, because not only are we losing the lovely old houses, we are also losing the gardens and green pockets of nature in the suburbs... These beautiful roses are the Hybrid Tea, Rosa 'Pink Peace'. Very fragrant and perfect for cut flowers, as well as being a vigorous and heat resistant garden favourite. Hybridised by Meilland in 1959, an oldie but a goody!

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,

and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme,

and also part of the Nature Notes meme.