Tag: Rosa ‘Cassie’

A Bit More Fall Color and a Spam Alert

There’s some decent fall color in our garden right now, though it’s an area I’ve identified for future improvement. This long, mild autumn has given us more time to enjoy the seasonal hues, though for some plants it may have delayed the arrival of fall color.

October Bloom Day

It’s been a fairly warm autumn so far. Leaves are slow to color, flowers to fade. Though they certainly are fading.

Blooms of Mid-July, Part 1

By the middle of July it feels like we have reached the gateway to high summer in Chicago. Let’s see what’s blooming in the garden, starting with the main part of the front garden: the Driveway Border, Sidewalk Border, and the Island Bed. The remainder we’ll cover in a second post.

Thoughts on Rose Pruning

The weather was good this past weekend, so I got outside and pruned the roses in our garden. Pruning roses used to make me nervous, but now I relax by reminding myself that roses are basically brambles. At least mine are – two shrub roses (‘Sally Holmes’ and ‘Cassie’) and two climbers (‘Darlow’s Enigma’ and …

Last Flowers Standing

It’s the middle of October and the garden is getting drowsy, sliding into its annual decline. In fact I was thinking of calling this post Decline and Fall (get it – fall?), but Judy says I use too many puns. Although, some of the roses are having a late season spurt of energy, particularly our …

The Grateful Deadheader

Deadheading if fun. Deadheading is relaxing. Almost every day, I take time to deadhead selected flowers.in the morning or evening (sometimes both). Deadheading, of course, is removing faded flowers. We do this to keep the fresh, new flowers coming. You could argue that this is mean to plants, who want only to produce a certain …

Rose Report

This year got off to an inauspicious start for my roses. All in all, though, it wasn’t a bad year. I am a relative newcomer to roses, and there is only a modest selection in my garden. Even so, I’m very fond of the ones I have. The saddest development was the death of ‘Strike it …

Judy and Her New Camera at Lurie Garden

When we bought Judy’s last camera, about eight years ago, we were amazed by what it could do. It was a Nikon D40, her first digital SLR camera. We both tend to believe that any object that represents a major purchase should be kept until it is used up or no longer working (this explains …

The Flowers of Mid-June

It’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day again, so let’s see which flowers are strutting their stuff at the Garden in a City. This is a great year for Salvia in our garden. Salvia nemerosa ‘May Night’ and ‘East Friesland’, along with S. x sylvestris ‘Blue Hill’ are making a long patch of mixed deep and light …

Weekend Garden Notes

  Snowdrops are blooming. It’s a relief to finally see the first snowdrops (Galanthus) in bloom. In 2012 they bloomed in February and were done by mid-March. This year they are just getting started. I really should have kept track of the varieties I planted, but I didn’t so I can’t know which kinds are early …