July 9, 2013

Hi.  My name is Holly, and I'm addicted to striped roses.

There, I said it.  

I got started with striped roses on my wedding day.  I had ordered a kissing ball for my daughter to carry, and on it, I noticed this nifty yellow-and-burgundy striped rose.  I'd never seen such a thing before and was immediately fascinated.  You can see it here, on the right side under that big orange lily.  (There's another hiding on the left, but it's obscured by other flowers.)  I thought they were amazing - I immediately wanted some.  

I couldn't for the life of me find any.  Being newly married and busy with a gajillion things, it never occurred to me to just ask the florist.

Time went by and I didn't give much of a thought to the stripey goodness for a little while.  I was living in a condo and trying to figure out how to grow anything, much less something as complicated as I perceived roses would be.  I think the only thing I really did manage were some impatiens and too much mint.  I had the shaded yard from hell.

When we bought our current home, our townhouse, it came with a small garden plot in the backyard and another in the front.  I wanted to show off out front, make things pretty for the neighborhood and look kinda cool doing it.  There is, however, one problem: my house faces northeast.  The front gets mostly shade.  I resigned myself to shade-lovers like petunias and more impatiens, and dug myself in.  Soon, I had plenty blooming and even a few showy flowers.  Neighbors stopped by to see what I was up to every now and again.

Eventually I noticed the backyard.

It gets sun.

A lot of sun.  Like, eleven or twelve hours a day of sun, in the summer.

I can't show it off that much, true.  It's not going to get noticed when folks drive by.  My show-off Leo heart overlooked it at first for that very reason.  Somewhere along the lines, I started to appreciate the thought of a more private garden; one that I could love because it was mine-all-mine.  I started thinking about those striped roses again.

I had no idea what name the rose I wanted had, but I had Google and was willing to hunt the thing down.  

Couldn't find it.

In looking, though, I found lots of striped roses.  Hey, there is more than one kind of these! I was immediately enchanted.  I started learning.  I read up on taking care of roses, bought a book or two, and found myself watching the garden stores for rose bushes.

It's surely not easy to find striped roses at Home Depot or Lowe's.  Even my local nurseries didn't seem to have them.  A little bummed, but undaunted, I picked up a JFK and a pink knockout and stuck 'em in the dirt.  That was year one.  They're both huge now; the JFK is easily 10 feet tall, and the knockout has probably quintupled in size.  I'm crazy about the blooms off the JFK.  They're huge, sometimes more than 5 inches across.  I have some problems with red spotting and curling on the petals that I haven't yet managed to cure, but if I pick those off, they're dandy.

In year two, I found the Oranges and Lemons.