Saturday Morning Garden Blogging Vol. 4.16

Good morning, and the mystery is solved!  Welcome to Saturday Morning Garden Blogging.

Denver has had more see-saw weather.  Early on in the week was pretty typical for June: highs in the 80s, lows in the 50s.  On Wednesday afternoon a cool front moved in, bringing thunderstorms and, for Thursday, highs in the 50s and a day of drizzle.  The next few days will bring highs in the 70s and 80s — both a blessing and a curse: the cooler temperatures are great for the snap peas, which have just started producing; but the just-emerging corn could really use a blast of heat to get it going.

To the east of the front porch, a surprise plant has taken root: somehow a prickly poppy seed found its way to my house and sprouted.  It's a pretty common Western wildflower but not generally found in urban Denver.  Indeed, the Mister — a Colorado native from Pueblo — didn't know what it was.

Cross-posted at SquareState.

And as to solving mysteries?

I've written before about the huge old, wild-assed rose bush that grows next to our front porch — a rose that's common to houses all over our historic neighborhood.

Other garden bloggers and owners of old houses, have said they have the same rose: a once-blooming, very vigorous, with huge, long, arching canes.

The mystery was solved via an article in the Rocky Mountain News a few weeks ago about own-root roses.  Our old, wild-assed rose bush was not what was planted — or, at least, not what was intended to be planted.

Instead, the rose is the rootstock off of a more tender, grafted rose.  When the grafted stock failed to survive, the hardy — extremely hardy! — rootstock took over.  Yes, we are the proud owners of what may be the most widely-planted rose in the country, even if unintentionally: the Dr. Huey.  Dr. Huey started being used as rootstock in the early 20th century.

Now, I'm not 100% sure that ours is a Dr. Huey: the color and form is mostly right, although ours has less white in the middle.  And Dr. Huey is described in a couple of places as being "virtually thornless", and our bush develops large thorns on the main canes (although the stems with the blossoms have very small, soft thorns — perhaps that's what is meant by "virtually thornless").  So I'm going to go with it — we have a Dr. Huey, and I'm glad it has a name.

Of course, we still have the mystery of what Jeebus the Rose Bush is.  This is a rambler in the back yard which is crucified on the fence.  In 1993, the Mister had ordered roses from Jackson & Perkins, among them the rugosa hansa for the front yard, a white rambler, and he doesn't remember what the other rose was but does know that what we have isn't it.  For one thing, it's not a repeat bloomer, and he knows he wouldn't have ordered a single-blooming rose when we have such limited space.  The roses are a beautiful blush color, and do have a wonderful peppery scent, I'd love it if it would give me more than one blast of blossoms in June.  Perhaps it would repeat bloom if I could keep it deadheaded, but that's an impossibility: it's too thorny and sends out all its blossoms in such a huge flush and on such long canes I can't do it — I've tried.

Yes, gardening is full of surprises, especially when one isn't overly-anal about deadheading everything.  Like this lovely pansy; it comes from seed that dropped from a container last year, and is growing between two red stone pavers in the back yard.  Its darker sibling is growing in a nearby flower bed.

I rely a lot on stuff that self seeds: Johnny jump-ups in the spring; nicotiana in the summer; surprise pansies, petunias and dianthus from planter boxes — and prickly poppies that come from who knows where?

That's what's happening here.  What's going on in your gardens?