Tag: chameleon rose

Australia · David Austin roses · from my garden · garden flowers · rain · roses · seasons · subtropical weather · summer · vine plants

In A Vase On Monday

Joanne29 Comments

When I went into the garden this morning at 8:30 am to choose flowers for my contribution to Cathy’s meme In a Vase on Monday at Rambling in the Garden, I didn’t have any plan other than to pick roses and hydrangeas.

Armed with only secateurs and a plastic container of water to put the cut flowers in, I went straight to the main rose garden, dead-headed the old roses, and chose the best of what was available of the Olivia Rose Austin and Desdemona – both David Austin roses – and one lonely red rosebud whose name I cannot remember.

Desdemona at the front, and pale pink Olivia Rose behind.
The lonely red rosebud is now among friends.
Beautiful pale pink Olivia.

As usual, a random weed here and there distracted me, so they had to be pulled out. The gerberas have consistently flowered since … when? Late winter, perhaps. The more I dead-head the gerberas, the healthier the new flowers look, and currently, apart from being a tad bedraggled by the overnight rain, they look beautiful.

Gerberas always remind me of Shining, Happy People!

Now I have the Shining, Happy People song by REM in my head! So here’s the link, if you need to listen to it, like I just had to. 😉

Next, I went into the arbour garden, named for obvious reasons – there’s an arbour there, with a Pierre de Ronsard rose growing on either side. It’s a fairly new garden which I worked on just before The Hill Project, and I have read that it takes three to four years for the roses to cover and arbour. I will add photos of the garden soon. 🙂

There are two other roses growing in the arbour garden as well, a Jude the Obscure and a Roald Dahl. The Roald Dahl in particular needed some attention, but I did cut a couple of the roses to bring inside.

Peachy orange bloom of the David Austin rose, Roald Dahl.

Once in the arbour garden, I spent more time than I planned on doing – I couldn’t find a Gordonia tree I had planted nearly a year ago! It took some clearing of a Baby Sun Rose ground cover, which has really taken off, to find the tree. The ground cover had grown over it! The tree was bought as a tube stock plant, and was minute when I put it in the ground. The last time I checked on it, it was beginning to become established, growing healthy new leaves, so I knew it was in there somewhere. Needless to say, I removed the Baby Sun Rose, to give my Gordonia a chance to grow. I can plant more Baby Sun Rose, which is easy to strike from a cutting, when the tree is bigger.

Between pulling weeds, dead-heading spent blooms and choosing flowers, time got away on me. When it started to rain, I ran indoors feeling hot, sweaty and wet, and discovered I had spent three glorious hours in the garden. 🙂 After a shower, when I arranged the flowers, I found I had enough for three vases!

And here are the Hydrangeas ~~

Hydrangea flowers from two different plants.

Somehow, one of my Hydrangea bushes has ended up growing green flowers this year. I wonder why that is, when in previous years the flowers have been blue?

Faithful lavender always looks beautiful and smells divine!

Four Hydrangea blooms filled the vase, leaving just enough room to add a few stems of beautiful lavender.

Where’s the vase??

As you can see, the vase is almost lost beneath the showy Hydrangeas.

A few miniature roses among a Roald Dahl and Olivia Rose Austin.

A couple of roses had short stems, so they went into a tiny, plain white jug, which was another find when we cleaned out my inlaw’s house before they went into aged care. I also added some miniature roses, three Chameleon and a Love Potion rose. The purple sprays behind are ‘Walker’s Low’ Catmint, which grows in abundance around my garden and keeps the bees very happy.

With the flowers arranged, I chose three different places to display them – the Rose and Gerbera vase is in the main living area ~~

And the vase of Hydrangeas and Lavender is on the mantlepiece ~~

The final, tiny vase I decided to put in my office ~~

When my son-in-law replaced my computer recently, he suggested I move the tower and speakers, which previously lived on my desk, to a built-in shelf under the desk to free up some space. Now, I just have a set of red, metal drawers on the desk, which holds printer ink and paper – and is the perfect place for a small vase of flowers. So I thought it might be fun to add a photo of my office work area. 🙂

And from my desk, this is my view of the flowers, turned towards me ~

As always, thank you Cathy for inspiring my creativity with flowers! 🙂

Update: A Tuesday edit ~ here’s an additional photo for Cathy at Rambling in the Garden, who featured yellow/mustard coloured daffodils and narcissi in her vase this week. Cathy accompanied her vase with a tin of Coleman’s mustard, established 1814. I haven’t seen Coleman’s mustard here in Australia, but we do have Keen’s mustard. So for Cathy, here’s an additional photo, taken today ~

Next time I visit the supermarket, Cathy, I’ll see if we have Coleman’s here. 🙂

Australia · family · garden flowers · gardening · in my garden · remembering · roses · sisters · subtropical weather

In A Vase On Monday ~ Yellow and Mauve

Joanne32 Comments

This morning, I had a plan. Having woken at 6:30am feeling much better than I did yesterday, I went straight outside, sprayed insect repellant on my arms and legs (does insect repellant exist in other countries, or is that an Australian thing?), and went out to pick some flowers for a vase for Cathy at Rambling in the Garden‘s weekly meme, In A Vase On Monday.

I beat those dratted mozzies – and the summer heat! Woo-hoo!

As usual, I dead-headed old flowers, pulled out any weeds I found, and collected an assortment of any pretty flowers I found. After breakfast, when I sorted through my collection, which awaited me in a plastic cup, I found I had enough flowers for two small vases. So I separated them by colour – yellows and mauves.

From the front windows of my house last week I had noticed plenty of colour on my miniature rose bushes. All three of these roses are from the same rose bush, aptly named ‘Chameleon”.

There are several different colours of Dianthus in bloom, but I only chose the white for this vase. Also, white alyssum adds a delicate touch and some greenery to the vase.

These tiny bell flowers, I believe, are called ‘Correa’, which is native to Australia. I know I have the name added to a photo from last year, somewhere, so I will edit the name if I am wrong. For now, I am going with Correa.

Update: Eliza noted in the comments that this plant is a Cuphea. I remembered where I had put the original label that came with the plant, and Eliza is spot on! This flower is in fact a Cuphea ‘Honeybells’. So thank you for the plant ID, Eliza. 🙂

And here’s a closer shot of the alyssum, just because I love seeing the detail of their tiny flowers!

This flower was a surprise find this morning. It is an Abelia ‘Francis Mason’, a new plant to me, which is planted in the new rockery garden opposite the house. I didn’t notice it was flowering until I went up into the rockery to pull out a weed I had noticed, and there it was, looking very pretty. I love the variegated foliage on this plant, which is what attracted me to the plant when I bought it last year.

And here is where the yellow flower vase will sit this week. 🙂

The mauve vase of flowers are arranged in a small vase that I had all but forgotten about until I saw it in my vase cupboard this morning, and it holds many treasured childhood memories. One of my sisters, who is thirteen years older than I am, loves gardening also. She may even be responsible for my early interest in gardening and flowers. When I was a child she would take me out into the garden to find flowers to bring indoors. We grew pansies, violets, fuchsias, snowdrops, poppies, all planted by Chris, who also cared for the garden when she lived at home. This vase is one we used to put some of our flowers into. There was an even smaller matching vase as well, but I think it must have been broken during one of my house moves in years gone by. As you can see, this vase has many imperfections, but it all adds to the character of the vase. For me, it’s the memories that count. ❤

In this vase I have two blooms of a miniature rose called ‘Love Potion’. The colour is more pink-ish than mauve, but I am happy with the combination of the flowers.

Beside a sprig of mauve coloured Alyssum is Society Garlic, which just keeps on flowering. Every week, I find more new blooms when I go to visit my roses. I have Society Garlic growing around most of my roses, as apparently the garlic odour is a deterrent to aphids.

This mauve flower is called ‘Mona Lavender’. You will notice actual Lavender in the vase next to it, which is a completely different type of plant. The word Lavender simply relates to the colour of the flowers. This plants is from the Plectranthus genus and will only grow in shade, or dappled, morning sunlight. It grows very well under my purple Tibouchina tree, which is right outside my front door.

Looking at the vase from another angle shows the detailed pattern on the Mona Lavender flowers behind two shades of Alyssum, along with my two Love Potion roses.

The flower adorned teddy ornament was a gift from my daughter when she was a child, and the pretty doily was made by my Mum, many years ago.

Now I am going to send my sister some photos of my mauve vase! She lives in Tasmania, many miles from where I live, so I don’t see her often. We often send each other gardening photos, so I am sure she will love to see my vase – and I hope she remembers it! ❤