a panorama image of gasworks park, looking south over south lake union. the day is sunny, the lake is calm, and the path lays at your feet

Musings and Mumblings

It Bloomed!

by: Rey, Fri, Jul 25, 2025

gardening, roses

My actual yard is under the cover of a hemlock and a cedar, it is NEVER in anything i'd even call 'partial sun'. I struggle to figure out what the hell to put back there (although I discovered this year that impatiens seem to like it a lot in the container on the balcony, so that's fun!) But I've wanted to try my hand at roses for some time.

a large plastic pot about two feet tall stands on a small balcony. growing inside it are a sword fern with long fronts and a smaller plant with deep green leaves that come to points, with multiple pinkish-red blooms coming off of a center stem.
I know neither jack nor shit about impatiens, but this one seems happy with it's fern and primrose friends!

Roses require a lot of light, at least six hours of full sun. That's kind of hard living in my tiny two-tree forest. BUT! I am a woman with a plan, and the permission of my front-door neighbors to Do Things with the mow-strip in front of our townhome four-pack. It's been a multi-year project, but slowly it's gone from The Land Of Weeds and Sorrow with a weird-ass shrub, to The Land of Sad But Trying Orange and Red Flowers with a whole-ass apple tree. (That weird-ass shrub? The result of not pruning a fruit tree for years and years, it turns out! Who Knew! I certainly didn't till I saw fruit on it!)

A messy strip of partially dead grass and weeds, with an approx ten to twelves foot tall srub, with lots of branches coming from the very bottom, and growing every which way.
I can't blame myself for not realizing this was a tree.
A view of the same location from the other side. the dead grass is gone, and is now bark mulch with flowers planted below it. The shrub is now a tree with a clearly visible trunk whose branches start about five feet off the ground and extend up and out.
Once I figured it out, I attacked it with a hand-saw and then a pruning chainsaw. It took multiple days to get it cleaned out, but doesn't it look so much better?

So, now there's a significant reduction in weed quantity, a layer of mulch, and a small octagonal wooden pot, with one single Manhattan Blue rose bush planted in it. It came on it's own roots, as basically seven green sticks, sticking out of a tiny cardboard pot. I followed the instructions, I have been making sure it gets watered, but not too much, and fertilized (sometimes w/ the water-change bucket from my fish tank, but still), and yesterday as I was backing down the drive on the way to a concert, I let out a huge gasp.

An octagonal container made of wood, about two feet wide, is shown from the top, with a plant inside of it that consists solely of seven green canes rising up about eighteen inches. The dirt is covered in bark to protect it. The background has mulch and small flowers under the apple tree previously described.
I knew that my rose would come without foliage, and yet, this was still somewhat unsettling, because... what if it didn't grow?!?

That's a whole-ass flower!!!!

a tight shot of one branch of the previously described plant. It's now got deep green leaves with serrated edges, and in the very center is a pink or purple (I can't really decide) flower. Unlike 'traditional' roses, this one only has one layer of petals, and the center is full of yellow stamins topped with tiny brown round nubs. Another bud is visible above the flower.
Its a rose, I swear!! It's called Manhattan Blue, don't ask my why they named a pink/purple rose "blue", I was not on the committee.
A closer view of the single pink bloom, with a hand holding it level for better viewing. Veins of darker purple are visible along the petals, as well as a small defect on one of them.
The flowers will apparently have four to eight petals, and I'm both amused by the specificity and puzzled by the variation, as someone who comes from orchids, which have three, always (and three sepals for a total of six per flower).

I may possibly have gasped aloud when i saw it and scared the piss out of my husband, who thought we were having a near-miss while backing out the driveway. Oops!!