Stop and Smell the Roses

I drove up to Shreveport for the Society of Southwest Archivists annual meeting the Wed. before Memorial Day. Since I drove in a little early, I found a friend and the two of us headed just outside of town to walk the Gardens of the American Rose Society.


The Gardens consist of multiple small rose gardens sponsored by or cared by various ARS societies or individual rosarians around the country. For a minimal entrance fee, we spent about two hours wandering down paths looking at beautiful gardens of roses.

This one is Heart O' Gold, a grandiflora hybrid introduced in 1997. Absolutely beautiful and one I hope to add to my own small garden.
I didn't record the name of these beautiful creamy pink roses blooming in a row.

This one is called Lavaglut, a floribunda rose hybrid from Germany introducted in 1978. The bloom really do seem to "erupt" from greenery.

The Gardens include a special area for their ARS annual winners, including Perfume Delight, a beautiful hybrid tea rose introduced in 1973 that won the All-America Rose Selection Award in 1974.

I can't put all my rose photos on the blog or I wouldn't have room for anything else! So let me leave you with a photo of this unusual striped rose I saw in the Houston Rose Society garden.

It did not have a name tag with the plant, but after an online search I believe this is the George Burns floribunda, a hybrid introduced in 1998.

If you happen to find yourself headed to Shreveport on business or for a leisurely family trip, plan to stop at the Gardens and spend an hour or so admiring and smelling the roses!

Flowers for Mother's Day

Bryan gave me flowers for Mother's Day, but not cut flowers that will die before the week is over.

Here is one of the two flower beds in the backyard last week.

Here it is about 1 p.m. on Mother's Day.

Voila! Flowers for Mother's Day.

The rose is an Oklahoma hybrid tea, which is also the Oklahoma State Flower. (It's not terribly pretty at the moment, but give it a few weeks.)

You might remember Bryan also gave me flowers for Valentine's Day. Go take a peek at the before/after photos and then look at how it's doing right now.

What's interesting is that we put the same plants on both sides. The geranium on the right is bushy and full, while the one of the left is still small, but both have bloomed several times. The gardenias had one bloom... but appear to be growing new leaves. The blue whatever is weedy looking but always has a blossom. I looked all over Lowe's for more of the Anne Greenway spotted dead nettle to plant in the front yard. I had never seen this shady ground cover before but it's really done well and taken over (from three little tiny plants!) and now it's blooming little purple flowers.

Here are close ups of my roses.

Queen Elizabeth.

Don Juan climber. I had a Don Juan in Galveston. (Gone now, even if the current owner took care of them, it wouldn't have survived Ike....)

I don't know the name of this yellow, which is unusual for me because I like to know my roses. But this one was given to me by Lisa when she dug hers up a few years ago. I'm amazed it's still alive because it was in that center garden almost completely overgrown by a butterfly bush.