Update on the Flower Garden

Roses

My Sarah Van Fleet roses have been blooming like crazy for the past week or so. In fact, we've had so many roses on the bush that, for the first time, we were able to bring in a bouquet of roses to sit on our kitchen table. 

Sarah Van Fleet on left; Lafter on right

 The rose cutting I was given is now a day or so shy of two weeks old. In the picture you can see there are no yellowing leaves on the main stem I've rooted (the yellow is coming from a tiny leaf branch I took a gamble on and stuck in the dirt too). Also present on the rooting are signs of new growth! I'm not sure if this is left over leaf budding utilizing energy from when it was attached to the bush, or if it's actually making roots, but I did pinch off all the visible unformed leaf buds still on it at the time of rooting, so these are definitely new.

Two week old rooting of yellow Peace rose

 And finally, the darling of my rose garden, my Don Juan Rose has opened up its first bloom. It's been open for about a week now, and as you can see, the color is wonderful. The petals are only now opening all the way out, and the fragrance is incredible. More buds are about to open.

First bloom on Don Juan climbing rose

 Oriental Lilies

So a week or two back I bought an assorted back of 12 oriental lily bulbs. They are now all sprouted! I think they're looking good.
Here is the first barrel with 6. Will definitely be watching these as the season progresses. I anticipate wonderful flowers... 

And here are the Walmart special, "Oriental Lilies." These are the ones mom and I bought last Easter. The research I did lead me to believe they were Stargazers, but after observing their growth and seeing more in the store, and with some subsequent reading, I believe they are in fact the Stargazer look-alike, the dwarf After Eight. All the impact of the stargazer... in a much smaller (read, 1/3rd smaller) size.

This clump started out as two. There are at least 8 now. Or more. 

Airplane Plant

So I adopted my grannie's Airplane plant last summer. If my rosemary was the second most root bound plant I've encountered, the airplane plant I retrieved from my grannie's house is the first-place winner. I couldn't get the plant out of its dry-rotted pot. I had to break the pot off of it, after which the whole plant sat on the ground and kinda went, "yea? And?" I stuck it in the biggest pot I had at the time, and it seems to like it so...

 I honestly can't take a stab at guessing how old this plant is. The dry-rotting plastic pot it was in leads me to believe... old. And when I was much younger (15+ years ago), my grannie gave me one of her airplane plants, and I'm absolutely certain those plants came from these. So. We're looking at a very... very matronly lady here.

When I got it, all of its airplanes had died and were a tangled mess, so I had to cut them all off. But late in the fall it made one or two more, and below you can see the oldest, from last fall. I decided to take a stab at planting it today.

The mother plant has about 13 more airplanes on it, and they look incredibly good. So this one will be my test case, and I hope to make some more pots for myself and others.

 

I checked the root growth on it and thought it looked good, so I snipped the stem attaching it to the mother plant, and pushed it gently into some potting soil. Then I gave it a good watering, and now it's sitting alongside my root cutting.

I've been wanting to give this a try for a long time, so we'll see how it goes!