First Rose Blooms

A quick update on the blog before today's post - I am really working on making my blog better, more professional looking, while still trying to maintain a "personal" blog here. I enjoy what I blog about, it is really a documentation of my life, as I live it. But, it seems a little... outdated. I am trying my best to update it to today's standards. I have added a new page, where I am offering up SVG files that I have created for myself, thinking others might enjoy them as well. I have changed the comment system from Blogger's commenting to a system called Disqus (I am working on importing the old comments to the new system, though). Looks to be more popular. Maybe I'll get more people commenting. Lastly, I also changed the theme of the blog. If any problems pop up because of these new changes, please let me know! 

I have blogged about my rose bush several times since I got it. Last post I made, I was excited that it was beginning to have a flower bud. A few days ago, I walked out onto my patio, and saw this little surprise!

It was so close to opening, and gave me a little taste of what kind of coloring it was going to have. I got even more anxious to see what the full bloom was going to be like! All day long, I kept popping my head outside the door to see if it had opened any bigger. Completely illogical, I know. But I could not help it.

This morning, I went to my patio, and she finally opened up to greet me! My first ever rose bloom, and it is absolutely gorgeous! It is totally worth the wait, to see it in all it's spectacular glory. I counted a total of 7 other buds on the bush, just waiting to bloom like this one. I am very excited to see this flower with the other three buds in full bloom next to it. I think it will be even more beautiful.

Rose Bush Update

It has been a little while since I posted an update on my rose bushes. I think one is dying, very slowly, but the other looks like it's really flourishing! I added a few plants since my last update, and they are growing steadily, however it is the rose bushes that have been making progress. The other plants will really take off once it starts to warm up I think.

I am finding that plants really do well on my patio, I get full afternoon sun, part shade, and a portion of it gets no sun at all. I think I have officially lost my basil after a infestation of aphids, I got some pesticide too late, and now I think it is not going to recover. It is scraggly, dropping leaves and very wilty. I will have to stop by and pick up another basil plant from the nursery, as I can not imagine a summer without the smell of basil any more!

This is the dying bush, but it has a couple buds on it! They have been like this for a couple weeks now, and at this point I'm not sure if they are going to bloom. The branches are slowly turning black, one by one. It started with one branch, then just kept spreading, shriveling up leaves as it goes along. I feel like I have kind of given up on it at this point, I am just hoping that I could get at least one or two blooms off of it before it goes. I at least want to see what the flowers look like! Not sure that I will buy another bare root rose again.

The double delight rose bush, I blogged about (and again!) a couple of weeks ago, and it was just starting to have little nubs starting off of the branches. Now, it has turned into a beautiful little bush. The leaves look wonderful, healthy and green. The only problem I have found with this is that in the afternoon sun, the leaves will wilt a little. After Googling, I found that it probably does not have enough feeder roots to get water. The listed solution was to move the plant to part shade for a little while. I had been keeping it in part shade now for a couple weeks, and just now got the courage to put it back into full sun. I will be keeping an eye on it for several days, to see if it handles sun better now.