A rose by any other name............

Every year about this time I anxiously await my flower garden to present a lovely antique variety rose.  Usually only three, in a good year maybe four flowers.  You see, I’m horticulturally-challenged.  Plants come here to die, usually a slow agonizing death.  I have an awful time keeping silk plants alive.  It’s a known miracle if anything resembling green growth lives when I’m involved. 

For some unknown reason earlier this year I decided to grow herbs.  I bought three established plants, and planted basil from seed. All four are hanging on, and I even had to cut the oregano, rosemary and thyme back a bit.  The basil is growing slowly. We’ll see in a few months if they are begging for a new caretaker.  Each spring I pick out geraniums and a hanging fuchsia plant at the local nursery, and the clerk loads them in my car, says goodbye and gives them last rites.  She knows me.

Some people are genuinely gifted in the planting and growing area.  I admire these people.  They instinctively know how to get the right soil, exactly when and what fertilizers to use, and what growing zone they live in.  It’s like they came out of the womb knowing all this.  Not me. But…. allowing myself some credit, conversely, I instinctively know how to create a composition, how to get the light just right and how to paint their plants.  Or give me a quilt concept and I can design it for you. Voila….it’s done!  So while some people are out tending their garden, I am probably in my studio painting, drawing or sewing it.  We each have our gifts!!

But today was my day……the roses (bumper crop of four this year) bloomed.  I love snapping pics to savor later, inspecting to see what creatures may have stopped in to take a closer look themselves.  They looked lovely in the late afternoon sun.

Awhile back I found a tutorial to create stems of fabric roses. I thought I’d capture the excitement of my roses in fabric.  Picking a proper stick from the woods outback for the stem and just the right pink from my stash (having very little pink made the decision easy) I cut a five inch strip, pressed it in half, sewed a gathering line down the middle, refolded, then cut scallops for the pedals and stitched them into place.  Carefully gathering the center thread, then I wrap the tail around the stick end to form a bud, gluing it in place.  I continued gluing the gathered edge around the bottom of the bud until the rose was formed.  I added a small circle of green at the base to finish it off, like mother-nature.  Not bad for my first attempt.  And hopefully this will stay ‘alive’ long after the pink has turned brown and pedals have dropped from my ‘real’ roses. 

Until next year……….