I keep thinking the daylilies are done for the season, and then I find another one that captures my attention. I love the pink and yellow contrast in this lily, the front edge, dropping into the throat of the lily, and the stamens just barely identifiable.
Yellow Rose
And I’ll send a little humor to you on this Saturday morning, the start of a beautiful weekend. I found this quote while looking for a few words about roses, and just couldn’t pass it by. Especially considering the source…I think she was a wise, inspirational woman, but obviously she was a comedian, too!
I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall. ~~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Bird of Paradise
I photographed this unusual flower, or at least this unusually named flower. I guess to someone, this flower looked like a bird. In Paradise, no less.
Supposedly it does resemble the real bird of paradise, a tropical bird found in New Guinea. Hmm. Paradise?
Photographed at the Olbrich Botanical Gardens in Madison Wisconsin.
Softly Seen, A Heart in Shadow
I don’t photograph roses very often. Maybe because I’ve had entire years of gardening consumed with frustrating rose care. In out first home — a zillion and a half years ago and before children — I thought it would be lovely to plant some of the roses my grandfather had grown. I frequently gardened with him during my childhood, but I must have missed the parts of rose care that were the hard work.
I remember the good scents part. He would call, “Hey, Bo. Take a sniff of this yeller one. What do ya think? Ain’t she a grand one!”
I remember being allowed to carefully cut long stemmed roses with very sharp cutters. I brought them to my grandmother on the special days her Garden Club ladies visited our home. She would arrange them in exquisite bouquets of welcome for the admiring rose lovers.
I don’t, however, remember the clumpy, thick white clouds of rose dust or the aphids and black spot the rose dust was supposed to eradicate. And I certainly didn’t remember winter care. My grandfather’s roses grew in Zone 7. I planted my roses in Zone 4 which meant they required pruning and mulching and wrapping and covering. And even then, there was always winter kill that took a part of each plant.
I struggled with those roses the 7 years we lived in our first home, and when we moved I swore I would have no more roses.
So I have a rather tenuous relationship with roses. I love them; I hate them.
But then we were visiting Milwaukee today and stopped at the Boerner Botanical Gardens. While we were there, I decided to take a walk through their rose gardens. (The last time I walked those rose garden paths, I held the hand of our oldest child, while Sherpa pushed our middle child, a tiny infant, in a stroller.)
I took a few photographs before the mosquitoes won and I had to retreat to the safety of the car. I didn’t record the name of this rose. I was too busy slapping at biting insects and wondering what useful purpose mosquitoes have on this earth.
But I like this rose — its soft curves, the shadows playing with the lights, and the rose’s heart. A hidden heart.




