Welcome to The City of Desire.

This is only about half of the collection. The shop was having a sale last week and we got some much larger pieces, including a gorgeous Fenton Cranberry Hobnail Glass lamp. I feel like I need these objects to create little healing spaces in the house. See how they sparkle?

Probably the only Austin rose we grow that is a reliable shrub rose (we'll see about Lady of Shalott). It makes me happy to see all those sunny, buttercup yellow flowers. She has a nice tea fragrance too.

This is Kristen's favorite rose, Hybrid Musk Rose Cornelia. She's supposed to be a bit tender but she's kept safe and warm by the radiant heat of the house and has made it through our harshest winter in 15 years with little dieback. This is a pretty big rose!

Man, look at those weeds. I blame the 5 inches of rainfall we got over the past few weeks. Damn!

Simon Estes, Age 4.

The oldest roses in our yard are Simon Estes, Chapeau de Napoleon, James Mason, and not-Aptos. I'm not counting Moondance because it is a POS blackspot and thrips riddled floribunda that never amounted to anything. Simon here is 4 1/2 feet tall in his 4th year, and is producing dozens of flowers that look just like this one. Fantastic!

We finally have enough roses blooming in the garden that we can bring cut flowers into the house every day. It took four years for us to get there. Constant vigilance! I have to give a lot of credit to our environment with its rich, sandy loam soil and plentiful rainfall. We also get lots of blackspot, aphids, rose chafers, ticks, bunnies and the occasional deer coming in to ruin everything. The Garden of Eden it ain't, but sometimes things turn out all right. Like Simon here.



You'll notice we have no lawn...

She's giving it her all because she only blooms once a year!

She made it through the winter just fine in the garden. And apparently she's the only hybrid tea in our garden that feels like blooming. I love you, Iobelle!

Quietness is probably the most healthy and generous modern rose that's blooming this spring. And she looks perfect in pictures. What a rose! Her flowers seem more complex than they were last season...I don't know if it's because she's more mature or because we fertilized her with Neptune's Harvest. She's been producing a lot of blooms on long stems without side buds, earning herself the title of Bouquet Queen. And her flowers last a long time in the glass. Thank you, Quietness, for being such a great rose!

I hate that the protective cage mars the photo. But I love, love, love Blanchefleur. She is the finest white OGR I've seen so far. She was one of the more expensive bands at RVR, but she was so worth it. Damn!

The ARS gave her a 6.5 and said that in their 4 years of trialing her in their test garden, she never bloomed. But here she is, blooming away and I only planted her last August. I think that she's like Charles de Mills, another Gallica that needs a hard chill in order to set buds in the following year.

So here she is. In her first spring she produced 5 buds, and 2 were eaten by caterpillars. I don't think this flower is even open all the way, but look at that petal count! Look at that color! Look at that rain tolerance!

Looking just like Evelyn here. We have her tied to the deck. She's over 7 feet tall with hundreds of buds ready to burst. Go, Marianne, go!