Roses Are Red

. . . and many other colors in my garden!  More on that in a minute.

I’ve been trying to figure out where I left off since I’ve neglected this blog for way too long.  I’ve worked on several projects around the house, but none that have been really 100% start to finish.  The new wood floors in our Master Bedroom have been done for a while, but I still need to fill, caulk and paint the shoe moulding around the room.  Not something most people would notice (and no one really goes in our room besides us), but it still needs finished.

My Craft Room was painted, I refinished our old office furniture and changed out the knobs, but that’s all that has been done in that room.  I still need to decide what I want to do with the daybed in there – paint the existing frame or build a new one.  I’m also still trying to find bedding and I need to complete my ideas for decorating the walls.  I’ve used the “new” furniture for sewing and paper crafts though and it’s great to have so much more work space.  More on that room will come as I finish putting it together.

There have been some other random changes and upgrades around the house which I will document soon in another post.

Back to the roses – once warm weather finally came, I started working on the exterior of the house.  I’m not usually successful growing plants, but for some reason, I tend to have good luck with roses.  (The opposite of most people, I know).  I have added several to the rose garden I started last year.  I now have around 20 rose bushes around the house.  Most are in my rose garden on the south side of the house.  I want to remove the holly in the middle, but I’m afraid it will be a lot of work to get out.

I have wanted to label my roses for a while and decided to try a DIY project using clay.  It didn’t work out quite as nice as I’d hoped, but they get the job done and no one else really sees them.  I pressed the name of each rose into the clay, then baked them for the instructed time.  Then I carefully painted inside the letters with craft paint to make them easier to read.  Once dried, I sprayed them with a clear coat to hopefully make them more durable.  My original plan to hang them didn’t work, so I ended up drilling a hole in the top of each one and made a post out of wire for them to hang from.

This is a climber I planted last year that has done really well.  I just have a problem with black spot which seems to be an issue with every climber I’ve had.  I’m trying to get this to grow along the air conditioner wall.

It was covered in blooms around Mother’s Day so I made my own bouquet.

I have 3 Laura Bush roses – 2 tree roses and 1 bush.  The tree roses are at the bottom of the back stairs. When they are covered in blooms, you can smell them as soon as you open the door.

I now have 2 white roses, Pope John Paul II and John F. Kennedy.  The “Pope” I’ve had since the other house.

A huge bloom that opened up inside the house.

Another new one is Stainless Steel.  I had been wanting to get a “silver” rose for a while and found this at a local nursery.  The blooms start off pink-purple, but get more gray/silver the longer they are open.  They have a nice smell as well.

Here are 2 Stainless Steel with Blue Girl (which also leans purple but turns more blue as it gets older).

About Face is one of my new favorites.  The outside of the petals are a dark coral with yellow-orange on the inside.

I was really excited to get Dark Night.  They are an almost black-red with a yellow-cream reverse.  I have one in the ground and one in a pot (the one in the pot is doing the best, of course).  Unfortunately, the blooms on this don’t last long.

I have a new bright red one called Veteran’s Honor.  It just recently bloomed and is gorgeous.  The blooms are lasting quite a while and they have a sweet smell.

I also planted 3 blueberry bushes to see how they’d do.  One is covered in blueberries which are still a ways from being ripe.

We planted 5 Japanese Maples last year.  3 of them have died although one is now growing out from the ground.  I need to decide what to do with it because I’m not crazy about leaving the 6′ tall dead tree above it.

The one Japanese Maple that is still alive actually produced several new sprouts around it.  I left them alone for a couple months to see how they’d do, then I just transplanted them to pots a couple days ago.  It will take some work, but it will be awesome if these eventually grow into trees!

My “theme” for the back patio is centered around galvanized tubs and pails which I am using for planters.  I’ve picked them up at Lowe’s and Tractor Supply and they are a lot cheaper than normal planters and pots.  On the back porch, I reinvented some pots I put together several years ago.  The old version was a irregular shaped ceramic pot with a glass hurricane in the middle.  The new version is a galvanized tub with a rustic lantern in the middle.  (Lantern from Old Time Pottery).  The lantern is actually sitting on an upside-down stainless dog dish to elevate it up a bit.  I planted Rose Moss around it, which I like for it’s continuous blooming all summer.

I also replaced my clearance fountain, which was looking worse for wear, with a metal leaf fountain.  Our neighbor’s honey bees liked the old fountain as a source of water and it seems a few like the new one as well.

He recently gave us a jar of honey with the comb in it which is pretty cool (and tasty)!

I have a couple more posts in the works regarding some other updates around the house and plans for the future.  I have several projects I want to start, but even more I should finish first.  The craft room and master bedroom need finished.  I still have some ideas to complete The Kid’s room.  I bought some new cushions for the patio furniture, but haven’t been able to find the correct size for the back porch furniture.  I ordered foam this morning to make my own and need pick up some fabric to cover them.  I foresee more sewing in my future 😛