Roses

It is not just roses that I will be showing you, but that is definitely the theme of the garden this week.
And speaking of week, the 'six-on-saturday' meme is hosted by The Propagator. In his words, it's "Six things, in the garden, on a Saturday. Could be anything – a flower, a pest, a success, a project, a plan, an abject failure – anything at all!" So if you want to find out what's happening in other gardens, do go on over to his blog!

1. The pink climbing rose has flowered! Again, this is ubiquitous around this area (each house has one) and it does not have much of what I normally go for in a rose. A bloom period of just two weeks (if one is lucky), no fragrance, and hard-to-reach pollen. But for those two weeks, I forgive it all the rest.

2. Another rose. This now, is worthy. Delectable colour, lovely tea fragrance, and deep purple (!) thornless stems in winter.

3. I just had one lavender plant, and it died last year .Thankfully, I had taken cuttings. Actually, I had taken 6, but just one survived. I am so glad it did.

 4. The star jasmine is very far from reaching its  peak, but how could I  not show off the very first flower?

5. The persimmon trees are abuzz. They are flowering now, and the bees dote on them. So do I

6. We have started eating from our garden. There is lots of arugula, the peas have been processed and frozen, we get two strawberries a day, and yesterday we pulled up the self-sown corriander for  their seed

Bloom

Another Saturday, another Six-on-Saturday post. Hosted by The Propagator, this is a fun show-and-tell of gardeners. Do head on over to his blog to  see the other posts!

Finally the bloom period begins .Clearly, I need to plant more early-spring plants, but now I am luxuriating on all that is going on here.
1. Foxgloves. I started with three plants given by a friend. These self-seeded, and now I finally understand what David Culp means when he goes on about vertical accents in a garden. I just had round shapes before- now having these exclamation points here and there really makes a difference to interest level. But don't believe me, take a look

And because they self-seeded, where I  just had mauve before, now I have a spectrum from mauve to lime..sometimes on the same spike. Happy with this!

2. Speaking of lime..There is an old lemon tree on the property and every year it would give one or two lemonss which would pass unnoticed. Last year I tasted one and was shocked. They are sweet! I have never tasted a Meyer lemon, but Mian tells me that is close to what it tastes like. Not a bit of tang, just sugar. And so I hired a chap to dig up the area around it, mix in manure, and lay pipe that would take the kitchen sink overflow to the tree. I also took a friends advice and removed much of the fibrous root tangle that had developed over time. And then I limbed it up and deadwooded.
And now? It is full of bloom. We need to wait and see how many of these blooms actually translate into fruit, but it is good to see the old tree abloom again.

3. I have written about my spatrangi rose, but it is at its peak now. And so here are photos. Lots of photos- peach, pink, orange and the whole plant

4. Cupani. Not much of a show this year which is why you only get a closeup. But the fragrance! Lovely to have in the house.

5. Old rose. Not sure what the variety is, and is fairly ubiquitous here. But I love it and its faint tea fragrance.

6. Sedum. It flowered!

And would have flowered even more, but a hen came by and systematically decimated the plant of its buds.