More Roses

As promised earlier in the month, I now present you with the other roses growing in our yard.  The blooms have finally opened (that was the delay!) We now have, in order of appearance, A Shropshire Lad, Benjamin Britten, and Graham Thomas. 

A Shropshire Lad is a climber and we are training it to go along our neighbor's fence-- isn't the fence that is on the right side of a yard technically your neighbors? Anyway, we are hoping that we can train it along the top there and that our neighbors won't mind. If they do, once they smell the roses, their minds will be changed.  I love how the buds are a bright peach color but once the petals open up, it is a very soft pink. 

A Shropshire Lad

Benjamin Britten is finally gotten enough sun and produced several buds which opened only yesterday.  I am not sure what color to call these blooms: magenta? light red? hot pink? The buds, too, are darker than the flowers. I don't know about Will, but I hope that this one climbs up to the roof of the garage and takes over.  It would be absolutely beautiful!

Benjamin Britten

We have planted Graham Thomas by the front door and in an effort to be nice to the gas man, we have tried to tie up and trellis the rose, so he/she won't get pricked to death reading the meter.  Originally I had wanted the rose to curl around the column of the front porch, but realized that when said column needed to be painted, removing thorny stems would not be fun.  So, a trellis instead.  This is also the first of the blooms from the rose, as the white azalea bush is pretty dominate in the front yard until we trimmed it back to make more light for the rest of the plants. 

Graham Thomas

All of these bushes have now lead me to spend a good 45 minutes on the David Austin web site picking out another 3 bushes.  Maybe 4.  We have plenty of yellow and peachy flowers, and two reddish ones.  I am thinking that we need another white (we have only one), an orange (the one we have is a rose tree and pretty pathetic), and some deep reds.  I have made a list of ones I would like to have and I am having a hard time limiting myself to the 3 or 4 that we decided we had room for.  Now I am looking at other plants/bushes we have in the yard that will be sacrificed for a new rose.  I am looking at you butterfly bush...