Spring flowers

[Rastus]

They look nice.

[Big Frank]

Thanks. I just wish there was a way to transmit a smell facsimile, a smax, if you will. I still say they're the best roses I ever smelled. Better than perfume. The best part, besides the wonderful aroma is, once they're established, they take just about zero maintenance. I dusted them for aphids once since August, 1991, and basically ignored them the rest of the time, even when we had extended dry spells. Sometimes I cut them back in the fall, 3 feet high or so, knee high, and  many times not all. No matter what, I can count on having bunches of roses in June. When I went out to check the mail Saturday I had my nose buried in blossoms. As I quite literally took time to smell the roses, someone parked on the street 2 doors down said something about how good they looked. I have no idea who they were, but told them the same thing I tell everyone, if they want some, come on over and cut them off. I misplaced my pruning shears, so I can't cut a lot of roses off, but if I do, the more I cut, the more it forces it to bloom elsewhere.

[Rastus]

On the "to do" list is to put in a rose garden.  It may never happen but it's on the list. 

[Big Frank]

I beg your pardon... Did you promise someone a rose garden? If I dug one up and mailed it to you in the fall, it would probably grow. All I would need to do is knock most of the dirt off, but not wash it off, and you would need to dig a hole 1' wide and 1' deep to put it in. Add some halfway decent soil and water for a couple weeks and it should be good. A woman at work drove around all day with a rosebush on her towmoter in a milk jug with wet newspaper wrapped around the roots and it thrived. And I think that was in the summer when it shouldn't have been transplanted. I barely survived in the shop environment. My rosebush is like the honey badger, it doesn't give a s**t.

[Big Frank]

My lilies started blooming this week and my roses are completely done dropping all their petals.  I only took a couple pictures but will take more to show more flowers, maybe when I go out to mow today.

[Sponsor]

[Big Frank]

My "June roses" bloomed 2 weeks early this year. They were fully open May 18th, and maybe a day or two before that. After blooming in June for nearly 30 years, they went from opening up in mid-June, to the first week of June, to the last week of May a few years ago, and now around the middle of May. It's getting warmer earlier in the year. Here's what they looked like on the 23rd, before I cut dozens of flowers off and several kids in the neighborhood took them home in grocery bags. There are flowers behind flowers behind flowers, so there are a lot more than what you see at first. I like to stick my nose right in them whenever I check the mail or go in the front yard for any other reason, literally taking time to smellthe roses. There was one particularly good one yesterday that I wish I could post the smell of online. It was incredible. These are already the best smelling roses I've ever smelled in my life, and that one... wow! Amazing.

[alfsauve]

I'd forgotten about this thread.

The Clematus are doing well though not covering the whole fence in place of the Confederate Jasmine. 
Here's a picture of a stand alone planting, not on the fence.  Looking pretty good.

Now that the Cherokee Rose is no longer Georgia's state flower, I want some.  Having a hard time finding them though.

 

[Big Frank]

Looking good, Alf. My ex's grandmother had clematis growing on a chain-link fence between her house to the garage. I think that was the first time I ever saw them. I don't know if there's anything left at my mom's house, but last year part of my good smelling rose bush was still growing in her yard, by the back of the garage. I have other roses from one of my ex's step-father's places up north growing along the fence in my back yard but they're nothing special. My daffodils and tulips have come and gone and I'm still waiting for the lilies.

My mom had a bunch of lupines along the back fence that may still be there. And the front yard had various roses, and a bunch of deep red peonies the ants would crawl on and help open, but they may be gone. A long time ago she had carnations, then lavender in the front yard next to the driveway, and poppies in the front and back. I liked picking a lavender leaf, and crushing the fresh leaf under my nose while rolling it between my finger and thumb. Ahh. Good stuff. It almost made me want to make homemade soap out of it. I remember one time my mom had Jerusalem artichokes growing in the back yard next to the house. She sliced up the tubers and cooked them like water chestnuts in "Chinese food". One time she had a sunflower taller than the garage with a full-grown fox squirrel sitting on top of it eating the seeds. The things you see when you don't have your shotgun.   She had forsythia bushes growing all along one side of the back yard when I was a kid but those are long gone. I remember crawling around in the space between the fence and bushes, and they were drying out and breaking off. She had a lot of different flowers and stuff in the yard, not counting the garden which was on the other side of the driveway. My mom and dad had 2 city lots with a double width driveway in the middle, and the entire east lot was the garden. The house and yards sat on the west lot.

The blue spruce I planted in 4th grade is still in the corner of the garden and after 50+ years it's pretty big. It was probably Arbor Day when I brought home a seeding about a foot tall and stuck it in the ground. My younger brother's tree died, and my older brother's tree in the front yard turned out to be some kind of pine tree. It must be 5 years older than mine, but was shorter the last time I looked at them both. I fed mine carp out of the Flint River a couple of times. I'm not sure if it liked that or not, but it's still here and doing well.

[Big Frank]

Last week I noticed a bunch of daylilies in the back yard were blooming. When I looked at the ones in the front yard they were in bloom too. I took some pics of them this afternoon. The ones in the back yard are surrounded by roses. Me and my ex planted roses from one of her step-father's houses up north in Glennie, MI by the 6' chain link fence, all the way across the back yard. Besides the "Glennie roses", there are some of my "June roses" from the front yard planted back there too. On the other side of the fence are catnip, deadly nightshade, various other weeds, “trash trees”, and long vines that climb all over the fence and trees. Nothing a napalm bomb couldn't improve. It's all poison and junk that I'm allergic too. Anytime I clear out branches and vines coming through the fence, I have to take a couple Benadryl. It looked better Friday when some roses were blooming in between the daylilies.