Ambridge Rose

And one Charles Rennie Mackintosh bud. :)

It's a dog's life.

This is Lila our French Bulldog. She is really a wonderful doggy, she is very gentle and good and easy to care for and very quiet.. too quiet even. She doesn't make a peep if she needs to go out she just sits at the door and waits and looks at you. She can bark but she just rarely does unless she finds a a lizard or a strange cat or something. She is very snuffly and she snores really loud though. Her snuffling around the room sniffing things annoys DH but she is a good vacuum cleaner. She is usually very well behaved but she can sometimes be a bit naughty. I let her hang around with me inside when it is hot or cold or raining or just because. We let her sleep inside on a beanbag in the lounge room too but she always wants to sneak onto the couch.. just because she's not allowed to I'm sure.

Here she is giving me a dirty look because has just been kicked outside for trying to steal our dinner! It was a pizza box on the floor and the kids were getting some out of it when a certain little doggy made a lunge for it. I guess it was a bit too tempting to just sit idly by.

 

And here she is looking up at me hopefully because I called her name. She went and sat on her outside bed trying to impress me with her goodness.

She really is a cute little Snuffy. I call her Snuffy sometimes when I'm talking to her. :)

Yet more rose pics.

Yellow Button's first bloom lasted until this very warm afternoon when it shattered as I started picking off leaves. It has the most horrible blackspot that I have every dealt with. I'm not sure if it is a weakness with Yellow Button or if it is the result of the treatment at the hardware store. Most roses I see there (and some other nurseries) have loads of blackspot. I put it far away from the rest of my roses and I'll see how it goes. Fabulous flowers though they stayed open on the plant for well over a week.

The Alnwick Rose sprung this flower open on me today. I didn't notice it there yesterday. The petals are looking very formally arranged.

And 2 hours later she has closed up for the night!!

Be mine.. roses.

Happy Valentine's Day!!   

I don't know if you celebrate it but I like to try and convince DH it's a good excuse to take the opportunity to be a little bit romantic.  He is not very enthused but last year I convinced him to buy me my first rose (Pierre de Ronsard) so it's my first Rose-iversary too! Now I think I should get a new rose again today don't you?

I like St Cecilia's pale pink cups they are suitably romantic for today but her foliage is a little bit yuck. She was the first one to show signs of rose mosaic virus. It is very difficult or impossible to find non-virused versions of some roses in Australia. Most of my Austins seem to have it but mostly it doesn't seem to affect them except for making the leaves a little bit ugly.

The bud had a great hole in it munched by a bug but it still looks pretty good.

Funny Middle

Yeah today sucked. Valentine's Day might be ok for people who have nice enthusuastic partners/spouses but mine has been a butthead.

The surprise rose.

I forgot to update you on what my *surprise* rose turned out to be.

Dum-dada-daaaaaaaa... 

 Fimbriata. 

I was a little bit disappointed because it grows a bit big for me to just try to squeeze it in somewhere and the blooms are very pretty but not so large and impressive in relation to the size of the bush to make it worth keeping. I have adopted it out to Mum. My parents live in a tiny town about 10-15 minutes drive from here. It is a beautiful place. They have a yard twice the size of ours with a smaller house on it and a wonderful cottage garden with all sorts of plants and veggies, flowers and roses (but no English roses dad doesn't like them). Mum has planted it, as I understand, on their border and partly on her neighbour's property (with permission) so they can both enjoy the blooms. I think it is a pretty easy-care rose that you can ignore and enjoy. 

And what's for dinner today? I often cook from scratch because I am a bit fussy about packet sauces/bases but when I find one I like I'm happy to stick with it. I love this one all it needs is 500g chicken breast, 1 leek, 3 carrots, 3 potatoes. It was really quick to put this dinner on it took about 25 mins including the clean up. I put a bit extra of everything in it except leek - I only ever buy 1 of those just for this dish. I do love leeks but I don't have many good recipes for them.
My kids extremely dislike anything that resembles a casserole and my husband is not that fussed on them but I LOVE them so too bad for them weirdos.
***Update... they have changed the sauce and watered it down. Now it is bland and terrible. I'm disappointed as this was my favourite one. I thought it was odd that the directions used to say to add half a cup of water and this time it didn't. Why do they have to keep messing with good things and mess them up?

A Summer Shoot

The orange Chinese lantern.

Macro of a pincushion flower.

Ambridge Rose. Another one right down near the graft.

Ambridge Rose

St Cecilia

St Cecilia

St Cecilia

Yellow Button fading to a pale yellow.

The pink calla lily that I thought was smooshed to death has come back and multiplied. :)

The pink Chinese lantern.

Copper daisy in the sun.

What came up where I planted my dahlias... :*(

The front path with Summer Memories rose.

My new lacecap hydrangea. It's my first one. I like it. I hope it doesn't die, it was on sale because it was sunburnt but not as bad as mine are here anyway.

Yay the perennial nemesia is self-seeding! At least something good sprang up with all the weeds down the side of the house.

Pretty cute..

And that is all for now. I promised to take a girl from church out for lunch.. oh such a chore. ;)  Then I have to get home and make the house beautiful and bake a banana cake for my beloved hubby's birthday today. 34 baby!! We are really feeling like grown-ups now.

Today's blooms.

I feel so unproductive (lazy) today even though I have managed to do a load of washing and make lasagne for dinner. I managed to snap a few photos this arvo. It is very overcast with slight drizzle .. which only starts when I go outside of course. I wanted to see how Yellow Button was going...

And I found a few other tiny blooms on a couple of other struggling roses (struggling in the back yard the front ones are doing well). This is Tamora.

Ambridge Rose. Found this hidden amongst the leaves right down near the graft. There was another bloom there last week. It's trying! The whole plant looks awful atm coz it was another one that got scorched. I didn't get any photos of the good blooms before xmas coz I wasn't very well then. It is usually more of an apricot colour.

I am happy to see a few others budding up.  But Charles Rennie Mack is always budding up he's a champ. :)

Now that I've dazzled you with such beauty I can confess that all my azaleas and camellias (bar one) are dead. I give up on them it is too hot here in Summer for even the sun tolerant ones. Maybe when I get a shade cloth area set up I'll try again.

Happy flowers

Well I've had a nice weekend! Church today and some lovely rain, then a visit with a friend tonight. Yesterday I went to Bunnings to get a Weedmaster Pro thingy so that I can attempt to spray the weeds myself. Not sure if it will work well but I sure hope it does coz they really need some attention and DH is always busy working. I want to do them but it is too hard with all the bending with the other sprayer.  I got some other cleaning supplies scrubbing brushes etc and some CLR (Calcium Lime Rust) to clean the bathroom taps. It worked and finally the calcium build up is gone and they actually look totally clean, yay. This is actually a before shot but you can't really see the grime too much and I am probably not going to bother photographing them again in a hurry so in case you were curious to see the taps (and my adorable rubber ducky) here you go...

And I also got this..

which I don't need at all but I wanted it just to make me happy (after all.. those cleaning products don't exactly thrill me). It has buds about to open so it will be immediate fun! It's a Yellow Button rose by David Austin. Don't know if it will be any good but there wasn't much to choose from that looked any better so I thought I'd give it a go. I kind of regret not getting the Graham Thomas instead now but I wasn't sure where to put another climber for the moment. I really love GT bloom shape and colour but have not had great reports about repeat blooming. I don't really want just one good flush. This thing is supposed to stay smallish but not really sure how it will perform. We'll see. If it's no good I'll get rid of it. I'm trying to be cool and not stress. I could spend the same amount on coffee and not worry but for some reason I struggle with the feeling if I spend money on plants I *must* keep them.

Refrain for today.

*Sung to the tune of "Anytime you need a friend" by Mariah Carey* 

Anytime I spray the weeds it starts to rain. 

Anytime I'm sleeping in the kids are a pain. 

And when I go miles away the plants get fried. 

Oh don't you ever drive slowly (husband?) 

Laughter makes it alright.

snapdragons

Well I knew it had been a while since I posted but I didn't realise it was that many months! I have been struggling with my health and quite a few plants got fried in our scorching summer heat. I did get a bit upset about it and I tried not to think about the garden too much it was too sad not being able to do anything about it. My 9yo son Max has offered to start helping me water the garden and I told him I'm really impressed with his generosity and decided it should be worth some pocket money. So things are getting better, nothing else should get too frazzled for now. The front garden is doing pretty well considering this is it's first year. Lovely plants keep on flowering to cheer me during the painful times. I took some photos today of all the happy plants I can see from my bedroom window.

snapdragons, a photo by miss nomer on Flickr.

snapdragons

red chinese lantern

red chinese lantern, a photo by miss nomer on Flickr.

A dwarf red chinese lantern. I just stuck it in the ground to see how it would go and it is blooming it's heart out.

Wife of Bath roses

Wife of Bath roses, a photo by miss nomer on Flickr.

She is still tiny! Pretty Jessica is next door but they never seem to bloom at the same time which is good I suppose because there are pink roses there most of the time. Brother Cadfael is behind them and is massive by comparison.. glad I put him against the fence.

pincushion flower

I was very unhappy with these flowers as they look nothing like the flowers on the label. They look a bit too weedy. I was thinking of ripping them out but this one looks so cute with the sun shining on it I *may* have a change of heart we'll see.

pincushion flower, a photo by miss nomer on Flickr.

pincushion flower

alstromeria

alstromeria, a photo by miss nomer on Flickr.

These have been a bit neglected but they are doing ok. I like the dwarf varieties. Must get another colour from mum.

daisy

daisy, a photo by miss nomer on Flickr.

A copper daisy bush not to be confused with the copper/purple one out the back.

daisies & pansies

daisies & pansies, a photo by miss nomer on Flickr.

I can't believe these pansies are still hanging in there through the middle of Summer.. especially since I don't water them.

Pomponella Rose

Pomponella Rose, a photo by miss nomer on Flickr.

Pomponella is such a girl. I like her.