Everything's coming up Roses!

A little blurp on the roses in our garden. Although the primary crop in my farm-belt hometown in Southern California was Roses, I didn't spend too much time learning the tricks of that trade (except to discover, on a rose field tour during a festival, that although people sometimes stole plants from the fields, all they had to do was take a cutting to grow a new plant). At any rate, at my first home as a married adult, I thought I did a decent job tending the bed of roses we inherited with the property only to discover completely different types in our garden (not to mention a completely different climate) when we moved to Utah!

There are four types, if not varieties of the 9 plants we have...


The first, and my favorite, is the yet to be identified ever-bloomer. These three bushes appear to bloom, and then the bloom lasts for months. Sometimes it starts out sort of orange and gets deeper red, but once in full bloom, they just look good until they dry out, which seems like weeks or even a month!















On the opposite side of the spectrum are the climbing roses. We have the Golder Shower climber (from the tag left on it, first picture) and probably another, although not quite as vigorous a grower, yellow rose (close-up second picture). Although these two produce dozens and dozens of roses, they tend to go quickly and the flower opens up and then drops petals within the week. My list of things to do includes trying to figure out where this falls in regards to nature vs. nurture.



































The Climbing Blaze is another climber that looks like it's been through a lot, but has bright red blossoms that add a lot of color.





















The last three are very different than the others. Instead of full blossomed roses, these provide flashes of color with just a few petals on each flower. They are in a cluster of three bushes that would quickly run into each other if spared the clippers. While they do add nice color and seem to be pretty tough, they are also much smaller in cane size, leaf size, and, of course, flower size.