Planting and moving

I picked up 2 Lady Banks roses (Rosa banksiae) on the cheap this weekend when I was visiting my favorite mountain town of Idyllwild. A small nursery there was closing out its inventory, now that the planting season is over on the mountain.

These roses went on each side of the trellis next to the front door. There has been a small pink rose there since we moved in 7 years ago, but it has never really down that well. I am hoping that these more aggressive climbers will make better use of the trellis.

In order to fit these roses in I had to move a large, mature rose that throws off lovely long canes of blood red roses once a year. I have no idea of variety, as it was also here when we bought the house. It has survived one move from the back garden to this location, so hopefully it can survive another move to the other side of the driveway. It might actually get a little more sun there as well. I left a HUGE root ball on the plant when I moved it, so I think it should be fine in its new home.

I was planning on moving these roses later in the Winter, but things always seem to happen differently than I plan. As it is, there are 2 more roses that will probably move out of this bed and into others. I will try and do this right after I prune them back in January.

Here in the San Fernando Valley, my roses never really go completely dormant. Even in January I am usually taking off blooms when I do my hard pruning. This is so different from Ohio, where gardeners need to do much more to protect their roses from killing and damaging frost and snow.

Books

Garden Crafts: A Practical Guide to Creating Handcrafted Features for Your Garden

Serendipity never fails to strike when I am wandering through the library. I tend to visit every couple of days and have taken to browsing the "sorting shelves" as well as the new book area. I figure that if a book has been checked out recently, it might be interesting to me as well. This is one of my recent finds.

Garden Crafts contains not only general information about the variety of crafts you might make for your garden, it also includes 6-7 specific projects using iron, wood, vines, and rock that you can make yourself. While none of these projects are for the faint-hearted crafter, there are many ways to adapt the ideas to your own time and skills. I also like the fact that many of the projects use recycled items.

Through the gate and down the alley

In my recent post about our End of Summer Garden Party, I wrote of how I send our guests down the long alley on the north side of the house. This keeps us from having to answer the front door 40+ times during the party, dashing from the back garden through the house, but it also gives some build-up to the garden. I like to think of it as entering a different world, even though it might sit in the center of urban Van Nuys.

Today, I went out and took a few pictures to give you some idea how it would feel to enter the my garden this way.

Take a look by clicking on the photo above.