Holidays..........

Just a small portion of the photos I took on our holidays in Asia. While the world is fascinated with Marie Antoinette, my French friend is quite adamant that she's not particularly popular in France. Look! They are getting the venue ready for a wedding.........let's go and and be a sticky beak........... A garden wedding, by the sea.......... they'll bring out the flowers later..........(too bad I won't be here to see them)Some garden therapy......... Looking around.................at some Colonial buildings........ Lovely design........ A little bit of sea, sand and sun therapy......... And of course retail therapy as well! Gotta go and cook dinner, we've got company tonight. Have a lovely weekend, everyone. For those of you who asked, please check Comments for answers to your questions. Thanks.

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! What better things than to wish you Happy Valentine's Day with roses!! I hope you'll enjoy these photos. I have been blessed with these awards by two wonderful ladies in Blogland: Wendy at Pink Slippers awarded me with the following awards, thanks so much Wendy. Another award is from Texas Daisey at Glory Feathers, Star Light and Roses, thanks heaps Texas Daisey. Please don't forget to go and visit these ladies' beautiful blogs, they always have lovely things to show you, I'm sure you won't be disappointed. Have a great weekend! Roses' names: Candy Cane climbing rose (pink and white streaks, cherry blossoms looking ones), Jubilee Celebration (David Austin, medium pink), Radio Times (David Austin, pink), Sir Edward Elgar (David Austin, chemise pink), St. Cecilia (David Austin, pale pink, cupped shape), Abraham Darby (David Austin, normally apricot pink, but appearing more pink at this time of year). And the scents? Superb!!!!!!

I'm back and Tips on Growing Beautiful Roses #2

It's been a long time, but I'm happy to be back. My family and I have been away holidaying overseas, we had a fun and lovely time, but it's certainly nice to be back. I was a bit concerned my roses would suffer while I was away, even though we have automatic reticulation system which turns itself on to water the garden at set times. I was nervous because it's right in the middle of summer here and it gets hot and dry. We have sprinklers restrictions and are only allowed to water the garden with sprinklers two days a week. So when I'm home, at least I can manually hose-water in between the two watering days on days I know are going to be scorchers to ease the dryness. Anyway, I was quite glad to find that my garden actually survived my absence and the lack of water during that time. Some of the roses' leaves do look a bit dry from water stress, but overall I could breathe a sigh of relief none of the plants actually died. One thing I found though was the weeds have gone wild and are "partying" in my garden, urghh! I'll have to deal with that bit by bit. When I went out to check the garden, one thing that came to me was "The roses need to be fertilised", which brings me to Tip #2 on growing beautiful roses. Roses are gross feeders, they love love love food and drink, lots of feed all the time, that's a fact. My fertilisation regime is around every 6-8 weeks or each time I see that there are not so many blooms. I use NPK Blue. (You can use any rose food or rose fertiliser that you trust) I also use cow's manure as a mulch and fertiliser(in time you improve your soil condition), I ocassionally use Sulphate of Iron when I see there is a deficiency in the foliage. I don't use wood shavings or any wood-based mulches as I've read somewhere that they take nitrogen out of the soil and my experience seemed to have matched that and the plants weren't quite healthy and disease resistant. I'll try my best to answer your questions in the comments in my last post, please give me a bit of time, thanks for your patience and interest. I don't know everything, since I'm considered new in terms of growing roses and I'm still learning and experimenting as I go along. (That's the truth!) But I'll tell you what I know. Roses used here: Pink Simplicity(Floribunda, pink), Tamora(David Austin, apricot) and The Dark Lady (David Austin, dark red)

Tips on Growing Beautiful Roses #1

Please forgive me for not having been a very good blogger lately, the holiday season has really been a holiday for me, lol. We've been away for Christmas, and more holiday will be coming soon this month and next; so I'll have to say I won't be back in full throttle until February.Now in the mean time, I'll start my "Tips on Growing Beautiful Roses", which I'm sure I've kept you in suspense for long enough. Again, please forgive me for this.Getting your roses Tip #1 Do not buy your roses from a Supermarket, in fact don't buy any plants from a supermarket. Plants suffer double the stress when they have been in the air-conditioned environment of a supermarket and then transplanted into the ground when we take them home. I never buy any rose bushes, bareroot nor any plants from a Supermarket even if they look very nice and tempting.Tip #2 Try and buy roses from a rose specialist nursery in your area. I find the varieties of roses I get from the rose specialist nursery in my area much more suitable for our climate zone, they usually breed the tried and true ones which they know will do well in this area. If you don't have a rose specialist nursery in your area, try and ask at a plant nursery and do your research on what roses would be better for your area, some roses are definitely more resistant to diseases and are tougher and will do better in certain regions.Tip #3 Find out what rootstock of the roses suits your area Even roses within Australia have different rootstocks. They vary from state to state because of the climatic and soil differences. Many people mail-order from Victoria or New South Wales will find some of their roses not doing so well after a while here. The rootstock that suits Western Australia is called Fortuniana. I'm not sure what it's like in the States, but I think it doesn't hurt to do some research so you don't just look at the beautiful blooms in the catalogues and want to order them all. David Austin roses generally do very well in Australia, the David Austin roses I've got in my garden have been grafted onto the Fortuniana rootstocks here by the rose specialist nursery and they are simply superb. Please don't fret if you've already got your roses in and you find out they are of a foreign rootstock, if they are doing well, please don't dig them out. It's simply a guide for when you go and get your new roses.