A Roll Around My Neighborhood

Yesterday, while friends worked on my yard, I took myself off for a roll around my neighborhood to look at the roses and other blooming things. So many pretty yard treatments! When I returned my friends had moved into my backyard. It has been almost fifteen years (maybe longer) since I have been in my backyard. Yesterday I looked at the pavers and thought that the wheelchair and I could do it. (Probably not regularly, though. I don't want to wear out my chair.) Here I am sitting in my own backyard!

Here are some of the roses that captivated me as I rolled and photographed what I saw.

The white roses where fragrant as well as beautiful. What a lovely day. I am so grateful.

Easter Roses

As the first week of Easter progresses, I am celebrating with roses roses brought by a friend. My own rose bushes have buds, so I know there will be flowers soon. (High up on the backyard bush the first roses are blooming.)









There is a sweet, faint odor of roses in the dining room that proclaims Spring is here! I have truly the worst case of cabin fever/spring fever that I have had in years. (I almost typed Spring fervor, and I think that would be a fortuitous typo. It has been cold, dank and dreary for too long--even though we did need the rain.)

I am grateful for Spring and for roses.

Roses in the Midst of Winter

Not really the midst of winter, but the end--and in my part of the country, from a weather calendar viewpoint it is already spring, but today my house smelled beautifully of roses.

Some months ago, my sister sent me a bag of flowers from her garden. A preponderance of gorgeous, dark red roses along with pansies and a few black-eyed Susans along with other roses. She had carefully dried them, for like me, she can't bear to throw them out. Then the problem was what to do with them. I suggested she send them to me and I would add them to my potpourri ingredients.

In a few weeks she will be giving a baby shower for her second grandchild (first granddaughter) so she commissioned me to make her a sachet for the favor for the guests to take home. Using her flowers was a natural!

In addition, I have accumulated a nice supply of herbs that have meanings appropriate to wishing the young lady well and oils to enhance the fragrances of the flowers and bring them back to their summer glory. Tea rose, old rose and rose garden fragrance oils joined violet and honeysuckle and finally a dash of clove and a liberal amount of patchouli.

The flowers, mixed with the oils nearly fill one bag and the herbs that I mixed on Sunday partially fill another. The dining room smells of roses and so do I, for at one point I wiped oil off my hands unto my clothes. I expect to dream of roses tonight. (Pictures will follow in another post. The light was too gloomy today to take good pictures.)

The library volunteer brought me two Mary Stewart novels, which I am sure that I read in my youth. I am enjoying This Rough Magic and just read all about the fabulous old rose garden in the early part of the book before I fell asleep last night. I dream of such a garden. When I first read the book forty or so years ago, I did not recognize the names of any of the roses. Now, after having a passion for gardening for the last twenty or so years, I do. (My passion is usually as an armchair gardener, but there was a time when I read gardening books as avidly as novels.)

The search for the fragrance oils led me to the website of the Rosemary House, an almost legendary herb business, that I bought many of my supplies from when I had an herbal craft business some twenty years ago. It is good to see they are still there and to be connected again.

I am grateful tonight for the rain that we have been blessed with in abundance this week, for the delightful fragrance of roses filling my house, for my sister's sweet generosity as she draws me in to be included in a family activity that I am too far away from and for the connection to a business that I had so long ago. Grateful too to be reviving my own.

The Garden for Advent

On this Wednesday of the first week in Advent I still have the perfume of roses in my house. This is so amazing to me. I don't think that it has ever happened before, although at least two friends have told me at different times in years past that they have had roses blooming at Christmas.

First is the Christmas cactus continuing its joyous bloom.


Next are the roses



A friend brought these flowers from her garden (also in my neighborhood) last week



I found the combination of orange and lavender in this arrangement absolutely stunning. Not colors that I would have combined if I had been consciously thinking of a palette to play or design with, but they work amazingly well.

Much to be grateful for on this wintry day. The light at this time of year has a wanness and poignancy as the year wanes. Soon though, the days will lengthen, the light will return and the flowers of Spring will come back. All part of the waiting and expectation of Advent. Christ, Our Lord, will come into our weary hearts to remind us of His eternal light and joy. The light of day will come, too, following the celebration of His coming. Much, indeed, to be grateful for. I just have to remember it!

Mother's Day

Wishing all the moms I know a happy Mother's Day and remembering my own mother.

Her middle name was Rose and she loved roses so. I look out as I write this on a half-century old rose bush in the far corner of the back yard. Identified a few years ago by my friend G. (a mother herself) as Cecil Brunner, it is coverd in pale pink blossoms and buds.

In the far corner of the front yard is the "cornflake" rose, the one that Mama planted. We ate whatever cereal it was that had the offer. Three boxtops were sent in and the bare-roots plant arrived. Papa planted it in the far corner. At one time, it filled that corner with a huge bush. The bush is struggling to survive against the poisonous oleander planted on the other side of the fence. Sigh.





I would love to identify this rose so that I could find another. At one time it was so fragrant that all I had to do was open the front door and the fragrance filled the house. Over the years, it has lost its fragrance.

When we lived in Toledo, Mama also grew beefsteak tomatoes in the summer. Very best tomatoes I ever ate. My memories of her are of a woman always busy with her hands. Laundry, cooking, washing dishes, ironing and finally at the end of the day a few minutes to herself to play her beloved piano.

Sometimes, looking back, I wish my parents could have home schooled us. Music and literature, French and cooking, history and domestic science could have come from Mama. Math and science from Papa. It would have been much more fun than school. Of course, it wasn't done then and I am sure she never thought of herself as a teacher. When we came to California, she became one, teaching in the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine program at St. Athanasius, our local parish church. She would have been a wonderful piano teacher too.

Sunday mornings bring back memories of Mass, followed by brunch. Ah the smells of bacon and eggs and cinnamon toast! The Sunday comics were followed by homework in the afternoon and more cooking for Sunday dinner. Bike rides around the neighborhood on Sunday afternoons, especially in the Fall, finished with coming home to those good food smells. Finally, in the evening we would all watch Maverick.

Mama loved life and her laughter, love and music filled our lives. We were so blessed and are so grateful.

Saturday--the Week has Flown!

The week has flown by! I have been nursing a hand problem that makes it difficult to type so am behind on everything except taking flower pictures. With both irises and roses on the counter there is much material for this indoor photographer to play with! More to learn too.

Here are some of the recent pictures of my flowers. The first is of the Cecil Brunner roses that a friend cut for me yesterday. They remind me of one of the impressionist painters, perhaps Renoir, my favorite. The second one was taken outdoors by my young friend who has just returned home from her first year of college. The last is of the last of the Iris from another friend's garden.






I have had fun playing with Kaboodle (which I call kaboodle/doodling. My computer is also calling me to do some serious security updating, so it looks like my afternoon is taken care of for today! I am grateful for the flowers, including the brilliant splash of red from the few poppies that are blooming.

The Rose and the Iris

I have been delighted all week by the presence of roses in my life. My Mr. Lincoln (which I call, Mr Lincoln, I presume because we aren't really sure that it is)is a bonny rose indeed. Large, true red, many petals and an incredible fragrance. As the flower dies, the petals darken and the scent is concentrated. It is a wonderful flower all the way around and will make beautiful potpourri with rosemary, frankincense, myrrh and balsam oil for Christmas.

It has been joined by a light purple Iris. Each of the colors makes the other "pop" and the stem has two more buds that will bloom over the weekend. It was the gift of my dear friend C who visits on Thursday.

C also helped me pick up and categorize all the fallen books in my bedroom. Well, I made the decisions, she did the work. Three boxes sit on the piano bench ready to go to her yard sale, or to be sold on the internet or just donated to the Friends of the Library.

The weather has been so mixed this week that I have had the aches of post polio--imagine a headache that starts at your head and proceeds down your spine and into all your joints. Not fun. So I will be glad when the weather settles a bit more and winter is truly over and done (the flowers already having appeared on the land.)

Back to my cafepress templates and some designs for Mother's Day.

TGIF

Thank goodness it's Friday! The week went by so fast. Today is the day, I hope, that the painting will be finished. Hurrah! Then I can finish sorting everything that went from the "big room" to the living room and have a crafting and sewing studio for the first time in my life. The sewing machine is already set up under the window on a table that used to hold an xt clone--the original household computer.

Yesterday, as M painted and I threw out old paper, I almost felt that I could hear the house sigh. It is returning to its original size, recovering its spaciousness and an accompanying sense of graciousness.

While all of this has been going on inside the sunflowers have been growing even taller outside. Watching them renews my sense of wonder. The oldest one is waning. As the flowers go to seed, the petals seem to grown longer and they sweep down from the flower, like eyelashes on closed eyes. They retain a charm, even though they are fading fast.

The roses are also blooming on my deck, although the big bushes in the ground refuse to bloom. Something about the dry winter and cooler than normal summer perhaps?

I came upon a wonderful article on rooting rose cuttings the other night. I will try to remember and post the link.

Happy Friday.