Noon Rose…..

 

Roses here in the South are just beginning to pop.  This is one from the new front garden.  The “Mister Lincoln” looks lifeless…..

Jane

“Spring Orgy” for dversepoets.com

(O.L. Weeks Rose, non fragrant)

Sarah over at dversepoets.com is hosting today, poems about the meanings of flowers.  This is my take.  I have 60 some rose bushes here on the property, some 40 years old and older.  Many just planted this spring.  Husband dragged home 11 rose bushes from a movie set they were throwing away.  All lived.

Lady Nyo

Spring Orgy

 

The roses are having an orgy.

They haven’t the decency to wait for the dark,

But ply their lust in the soft, morning light.

 

Randy Graham Thomas is leering.

Madame Carriere is blushing.

Her pink silk-petal gown flutters

As she twists coyly to avoid his embrace.

 

By 10am the sun warms their scents and foreplay is over.

The wind at 11am entwines the two.

Pistils and stamens are seriously ‘at it’

Brushing languorously over parts

An hour ago were covered discreetly.

 

At high noon in the heat of the day

Pollen is floating all over the air

And even the wide-eyed cats

Sitting under tender foliage are blushing.

 

The garden gnome is licking his lips

While a concrete hand creeps to his crotch.

 

This fall there will be rose-hips aplenty.

Red nipples packed with tiny seeds,

Evidence of a spring-time lust.

 

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

Some May Roses….and a poem.

 

–

The world is going to Hell in a Handcart, and there is  much turmoil today.  The political and social issues are thrust into our faces and the only way to escape is in the flower garden, hiding under foliage with the cats.

Regardless how you grow roses, in big pots or in the ground, they are a wonderful antidote to the chaos of life.

And society.

I am no expert on roses.  The trick  is finding roses that have the qualities of survival.  This can be tricky.  The English David Austen roses are lovely, but weak stemmed.  A rain shower can knock the blooms off. Climbers can be iffy, too.  I have several that I would recommend, a Madame Alfred Carriere, soft pink climber that is almost a constant bloomer.  The same with Graham Thomas, a butterscotch yellow.  Both of these are fragrant.  My neighbor, obviously not a gardener, said he had seen yellow roses in the stores, but had never seen them on the vine.  Something like that.  That made me laugh, because walking through the vegetable garden you get attacked by the Graham Thomas as it stretches out it’s stems and blossoms from the side of the house.  The Madame Carriere was 24×24 feet until we cut it down to do the siding.  It’s growing back with impunity.

Some of the very best roses are sturdy Tuscany reds, and the beautiful and prolific New Dawns.  I have two over an arbor and they are breaktaking.  I cut roses almost every day in the morning to put in the house, but most of them don’t last long.  Except the Tuscany.   Home Depot’s “Patio Roses” have turned out to be marvelous:  constant bloomers, reds and pinks and within a season you have to cut back because they will take over the garden and the world.

The one above, that silly red with white stripes is my hands down favorite.  I haven’t figured out what it is, but it’s the second year for it and it looks promising.  It’s crazy with buds so it should have a good showing in a week or so.  It makes me smile when I see it, and that is a good thing in life.

This is the luscious “New Dawn”.  It’s not quite at full pool yet inblooming but it will repeat over the summer a number of times. It’s a vigorous climber and great for a garden structure like a strong arbor. Smells like Ivory Soap.

 

Some New Dawn blooms I picked last night and put in a silver wine cooler.  They last about a day and a half in the house, but they are so beautiful, even in death.

“Wollerton Hall”, an English climber that has had a hard life.  I kept moving the poor thing for the last 3 years as we did construction on this old house.  This morning I noticed that it was blooming, finally, and this lovely bloom will be followed by about 5 other buds so far.  It’s decided it likes the afternoon sun because that is all it gets on the West side of the house.  The scent is like….cookies.

My dead aunt Barbara told me once that my grandfather, her father, was known for his rose garden.  He apparently had a knack with roses.  I have no idea what he grew, as he was long dead before I was born and no one is saying what kind of roses, but I would believe they were old China Roses and Tuscany.  We are so fortunate today to have so many selections to choose from. I guess I have a bit of his DNA with roses, but my gardens are so much easier to maintain.

A combination of New Dawn, an open faced Red, Sally Holmes rose and a random pink.

The one thing about roses is that they usually don’t disappoint.  My favorite was a Heritage rose, another David Austin that I had for 15 years before it finally gave up the ghost.  I would spring for another, but with 60 plus roses here, I would have to find a place.  Hope Springs Eternal when you are living with roses.

Spring Orgy

The roses are having an orgy.
They haven’t the decency to wait for the dark,
But ply their lust in the soft, morning light.

Randy Graham Thomas is leering.
Madame Carriere is blushing.
Her pink silk-petal gown flutters
As she twists coyly to avoid his embrace.

By 10am the sun warms their scents and foreplay is over.
The wind at 11am entwines the two.
Pistils and stamens are seriously ‘at it’
Brushing languorously over parts
And hour ago were covered discreetly.
At high noon in the heat of the day
Pollen is floating all over the air
And even the wide-eyed cats
Sitting under tender foliage are blushing.

The garden gnome is licking his lips
While a concrete hand creeps to his crotch.

This fall there will be rose-hips aplenty.
Red nipples packed with tiny seeds,
Evidence of a spring-time lust.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2018

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

Spring Roses in the garden.

This is the second year for the arbor and the rose garden.  The front roses bloomed early and the heavy rains beat them down.  They are just recovering.  Have seeded for grass, but the hens have been out.  The roses on the arbor are  “New Dawn”.  Those two roses were planted there 20 years ago, and they smell like Ivory soap.  They are constant bloomers, but mostly glorious in the Spring.

The roses in the vase are from a few of the roses in the garden.  We now have over 60 roses on the property and what are spectacular are the climbers….Mde Alfred Carriere, (1848, France) and the Graham Thomas, a pale yellow prolific bloomer through the summer.  On the end over the chimney is a Cecile Brunner….a gorgeous tiny rose with a huge scent.  They are heaviest bloomers in the spring, and a bit more in the autumn.

Lady Nyo

Roses are easy to grow….you just have to know the properties of each species. I used to bother, but now?  There are old roses that produce beautifully, “New Dawn”, Mister Lincoln, OLWeeks, many others, but these new ‘patio’ roses are the bomb.  So easy and within a year you have to clip back vigorously.  Dogs (4) and hens in the back gardens make it hard to grow things but they can be managed.

“O.L. Weeks”, prolific but scentless.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

“Poem To My Husband”…..

Roses from Fred this Valentine’s Day.

And Happy Valentine’s Day!….

–

 

“You’re all I have”
Heard in the dark
Heart almost stopping
In an inattentive breast.

I dare not look at him
Too bald a sentiment
And too true to bear
A light, comforting answer.

What would occasion
Such a piteous sentiment?

When one has lived
Within another’s hours, days, years,
The fabric of this making
Can be forgotten.

The warp and weave, the very thread
That appears as if out of air
(and it does…)
becomes substantial,
it covers and clothes more than the body
and the life blood of sentiment,
Love-
Becomes the river within, unending,
Even transcending the pulse of life.

“You’re all I have,”
A whispered refrain
That echoes in the heart
And burrows deep.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2010-2018

 

Roses…..

This is a Madame Alfred Carriere rose that has climbed up the side of the second story and is coming into the bedroom.  Beautiful rose but you can get hurt just rolling around in the bed.

A beautiful rose, but very invasive.

We will spend Father’s Day cutting back this climber.  I don’t care if it is the wrong time to prune…..you can get hurt just stretching in bed!

We did….cut it back to 4 main canes….no greenery on it at all, but did get some blossoms for the house.  Will clean up tomorrow and try to bend these main canes laterally…so the bud unions can form and we can get new growth.  The Cecille Brunner was  cut back severely this early spring and it is again blooming.  That bush almost tore the chimney down.  It looks cruel to prune so severely, but you do get new blossoms and canes.  The problem is the growth is so fast on these climbers you have to have ladders and someone brave enough to climb and clip…and duck.

I will miss waking up to a face full of blossoms, but it will always try again.  Nature Rules.

This is the new Rose Garden.  We had about 20 plants in containers for a year and then put them in the ground.  Then we dug more holes in this Georgia Clay and scant top soil, and put in 15 more a few weeks ago.  They were mostly English roses, David Austin varieties, which have very weak stems….Lady of Shallots, and  others I can’t remember names…and a lot of Knock Out roses that I wouldn’t do again because they really are invasive.  I have to clip, prune them every 5 weeks or so or sooner.  Can’t get down the garden path to that arbor if I don’t.  A few roses came from Walmart, just because they looked promising, and they lived up to the promise.  O.L. Weeks, and Mister Lincoln we planted in containers on stands in the middle of each side of the rose garden, because the Knock Outs just were BIG and swamped these two.  One from Home Depot was “Coretta Scott King”….a white rose tipped with a dark pink.  Lovely. The Lady of Shallots are a beautiful peach/yellow, but have to be staked where they are planted because they are so wimpy stemmed.  There is a really silly rose….a red variegated with white that has only 5 or 6 petals but is so pretty.  I used to be a real snob about where I bought my roses, mostly English and German and a few French roses, online, but now I go for the easier ones to grow and fill up a new rose garden.  These Knock Outs are disease free, constant bloomers and can be pruned into civilized shapes.  The arbor is covered by two “New Dawn” roses…about 15 years there, and they just had no structure beneath them….until we squeezed an iron seated arbor two years ago on Mother’s Day.  Perfect fit with some weaving of canes over it and it has taken off.  Those New Dawns are the mass of pink/white roses over the arbor.  They smell like Ivory soap.

There are two peach roses in planters from Walmart and they are just beautiful and remarkable bloomers.  I didn’t think they would do so well, but they really are impressive.  And cost next to nothing.  Tight budded and incredible fragrance.

My beautiful picture

“Lady Banks” that died when we cut it down and tried to transplant it to the side.  We planted another, but not in that place.  It ate up the corner of the house!

My husband holding a blossom of Lady of Shallot.  Too weak stemmed.  English teas can be that way.  English climbers are much better.

 

Lady Nyo

Spring, Roses, Wind and lots of thorns….

10 Year Old Cecile Brunner, Almost Gone with the Wind

We were planning an assault on the landscape this weekend, but we didn’t figure on violent rain and fiercer winds.  The picture above is of a very cut back “Cecile Brunner”, one of the best of climbing roses we have planted.  We awoke after a night of pounding winds and rain and upon wandering downstairs, something was different.  The front room was flooded with light.  Looking out of the windows along the fireplace, I saw the reason:  this huge rose bush had completely slipped its moorings and  fallen in a clump on the patio.  I was concerned the chimney had gone with it, but no, it was still up there, looking very naked.  My husband said he could salvage all, but after breakfast and coffee. I  didn’t believe he could bring it back to place of honor on the chimney.  I got out clippers and cut as much blooming rose as I could, thinking it would be easier for him to push and secure back in place.

Nothing doing.  That rose bush probably weighed 100 lbs with all the  blossoms.  He decided  a ‘block and tackle’ would be the answer  and throwing open the two long casement windows upstairs on either side of the chimney he got lots of  rope. He made some interesting knots and slowly we pulled it back into place….sans half  the blossoms.

Then he had to get UNDER the rose bush and secure it with wire and concrete nails to the brick.  This wasn’t easy, and the thorns made it even more difficult.  We have been picking  thorns from hands, arms, and in one case, his back.  Cecile Brunner got his pound of flesh.

Spring has sprung with a vengeance.  It is a remarkably beautiful spring, with that particular clarity of light that only lasts for one or two months at best in Atlanta.  It is now past daffodil and tulip time, azaleas are peeking and iris  in full bloom.  This year I planted “Dutch Iris”, different from the usual Bearded Iris, and the colors are remarkable.  They seem to be much more reliable bloomers than my old iris, but perhaps I haven’t given the bone meal dressings, etc. that iris desire?   I love the gray-green leaves, with or without a purple bloom at the top, and each year they seem to multiply…still without many blossoms. But I am impressed with the Dutch Iris, and though they look delicate, they bloom altogether for quite a show in a bed.

A few Dutch Iris in iron wash pot

More Dutch Iris, almost in bloom....

What fueled the assault on the property were a few plantings I bought from a local nursery.  At least twenty years ago we planted a “Blue Girl” rose, a delicate lavender rose that died quickly.  I swore I would never plant another one, but there was one in bloom with the promise of more blossoms on the rack. It was so lovely and delicate and the scent was so delightful I couldn’t resist. Plus, it was next to some god awful screaming red shrub roses and orange ones, too. “Blue Girl”  towered above these like royalty.  Paired with Mainacht salvia (deep blue) and Pink Salvia with white mugwort, it scratched a particular itch.  It was an answer for a very raw spot in the garden foundation.

Rose "Blue Girl" and Salvia

I’ve lost the rest of my post twice now, so I guess that’s a warning. I did put in about 15 new roses, but the jury is still out on these.  “Michelangelo”, “April in Paris”, “Fragrant Cloud”, “Pink Promise”, and am awaiting the luscious bare root: “Graham Thomas”.  This last rose is a remarkable yellow climber, never without butterscotch blooms.  They are of the old cabbage rose form and one of the most fragrant of the English roses. I’ll end with a picture of the Bonicas to bloom (from last year) and a poem.

I can wait.  Spring is a short season here, but the beauty is worth the waiting.

Lady Nyo

Bonica Rose on Gate

 THE THAW

Spring comes drumming through

Breaking up ice in the creek

Destroying a beaver dam

And with the unexpected noise-

The un-damming of my heart

A softening of my bones

A juiciness of loins

A waving of budding branches

In a new born wind-

Encircling tender arms-

A phantom will o’ wisp lover.

–

Spring comes drumming through,

Cracking open where winter nailed me shut.

–

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010, from “White Cranes of Heaven”, published by Lulu.com, 2011

More Spring in Bloom, and Steve Isaak.

I bought Steve Isaak’s new book:  “Can’t Sleep”, poems, 1987-2007 and this is such a dense collection of poetry, I am having to go through it very, very  slowly.

Steve must have made movies before…in a past life, behind some huge camera.  His poetry is like snippets of some dream-movie, but I won’t blow this review right now.  It’s just an issue of so much imagery to plumb and to pack in.  Review to follow next week when I can get a better perspective on this marvelous and first book by a truly original poet.

The pictures are of my back garden….over a fence and archway.  I believe this rose bush…actually two rose bushes, are “Bonicas”…Nope…they are NEW DAWN) .but they might be something else, because they certainly are climbers.  I love pale, pink roses, and these 5 year old plants certainly are giving their all.  They are ‘constant’ bloomers and you only get that by heavy feeding…which I don’t.  I will have to remember to feed them and all the others, because they are such spectacular plants they deserve the effort.

Lady Nyo

Bonica Rose Bush...we think

more of the same bush

more roses

GRAHAM THOMAS

She stood quietly in the garden, dappled sunlight falling like a tattered golden veil, crushing a Graham Thomas in her hand.  The silky texture slipped through long, bony fingers. A seductive perfume carried upwards, the feel of the petals reminiscent of something she vaguely remembered in the past.

Yes, she remembered now.  It was her sex, soft and puffy, with powdered lips awaiting the frisson of arousal. The man who once kissed those lips was long dead, a pale ghost to her memory.

A tower of rose heads nodded their encouragement.  They watched her season after season, the cycle of bush-life matching her own. Grown thin during the years, all gnarled canes beneath and gall, too. Within years both had become feeble. Soon the bush would cover her grave, dropping its petals in remembrance until it, too, faded from earth.

Now Graham Thomas was pleading to cover her mound with his perfumed beauty. He would nestle within the deserted folds of her abandoned sex. He would make her juicy again.

He promised to leave the thorns on the bush.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2008

Spring in Bloom

Front Gate

Bonica Roses in Front Garden

More roses

Front Garden

MEMORY

What is it about memory,

Constant  like taste,

A song floating across

The mind unbidden,

A bittersweet violin

Playing against decades,

Coming in and out of hearing,

But like faint soundwaves,

Never leaving,

Never disappearing.

—

A highway of sentiments

Both lost and found

Spirals of emotions

Throwing shadows

Across the beam of life.

—

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2010