ARS 2007 Spring national convention

Some readers may know that the Twin Cities Rose Club is sponsoring the Spring 2007 ARS national convention June 28- July 02. It is truly amazing how a dedicated group of rose growers can pull an event like this off. I have been very busy putting together a Power Point presentation for publicity for the convention. (That keeps me busy while there is still snow on the ground and the roses are dormant!) If you would like a CD copy of this P pt, contact me with your address and I will mail one to you.

The Arctic Blast of the present

Minus 17 overnight and they say tonight will be even colder. How do these roses survive the weather? How do the people survive the weather? The wind is the worst part about the weather.

Northern Gardener magazine writer visits today!

The winds were howling and the temps were in the single digits when Eric Johnson arrived at my doorstep today. Eric is the author who was assigned to do an article about me and my rose growing in Minnesota. I shared my favorite varieties and tips for growing roses in the North. The article is scheduled for the May-June edition of the Northern Gardener magazine.

A History of the Fragrant Rose

This is another book I finished reading this week, it is by Allen Patterson. It was published in Great Britain in 2004. This book has reproductions of many engravings and paintings that compliment the text. The author covers topics with chapter titles named" Rosa Mundi: roses in the Medieval World, The Wild Rose Tamed, and The Rose Consumed"to name only a few. The final chapter is titled" The Making of 'Peace' : the biography of a rose." I learned several interesting thing from this book but my favorite has an illustration of how the sepals are arranged in the unopened bud of R. canina. I will have to scan the illustration so you can see it also. It is explained by Professor W. T. Stearn in the title 'The Five brethren of the rose: an old botanical riddle'

In a summer's day, in sultry weather
Five brethren were born together
Two had beards and two had none
And the other had half of one.

Winter reading

The past few weeks I have been rose gardening through books from the Hennepin County library. One that I especially enjoyed is R is for ROSE by Carolyn Parker. Carolyn, the author and illustrator, took the letters of the alphabet and expanded it to a 208 page manuscript that I did not want to end. Each rose from Alba, rosa rugosa to Zephirine Drouhin has personal photos and comments about the rose. The book demonstrates Carolyns' artistic photographic ability and success as a rosarian and a rose arranger. You can tell by the quality of the photographs that this book was written over several growing seasons. It was published in 2005 and is a book that I want to add to my personal library.

We knew it would get cold again

One degree. Five degrees. Wild weather swings. All perfectly normal and expected for this time of year, I guess. Last night my friends at the Twin Cities Rose Club gathered for our monthly meeting to hear Kim, one of our members who is a chemistry teacher at Centruy College, talk about the Chemistry of Roses. I am not a science person, but I enjoyed learning the basics and seeing the beautiful roses that were alternated with important facts about chemistry. This time of year here, it is fun just to get together with other rose growers, enjoy the photos from last summer's gardens and dream about the next season. What else can a rose gardener do when the weather is five degrees?

As The Tumor Turns

As The Tumor Turns