A rose by any other name

Nope, not one of mine. 

A few weeks we escaped our routine and played hooky. We got a takeout lunch, found a shady bench facing the Lake Harriet rose garden and strolled around the garden and fountains after our picnic. The roses have a pretty spread-out bloom time, so there's still plenty to see and smell.  Peak bloom times are said to be mid-June to early October.

The roses all seem to be Zone 5, so I'm not likely to try to plant any of them at home because I'm still sticking with at least Zone 4 hardiness ratings. I wish I could replicate the rose garden's terra cotta rope edging, but a brief search showed me a flat of terra cotta rope edging costs and weighs 400 £/pounds, so that's right out. They do sell molds to make your own tinted concrete versions, but since I have a hard enough time making myself weed along our crumbling edging, taking the time to make new edging seems most unlikely.

I've grown roses a time or two, but the only thing that's stayed bought for more than about five years is a miniature rose in a hanging pot, duking it out with tree seedlings in its clothes-line perch. It overwinters in the basement and comes back from twig form in late winter.

Lisianthus make fabulous, long-lasting cut flowers.

The closest thing I've got to looking like a rose planted in the ground this year are lisianthus, aka prairie gentian. I ordered 12 of them from Burpee this year, and waited and waited. (They are very slow growing, and hence, slow to ship.) They chose to ship them in early June when we were up north, so I had to ask a neighbor to intercept the package and tend to them. We hustled them into the ground on our return, and then we've waited and waited for them to bloom. Last week some of them finally did. Next year I might try growing them from seed, but it takes five to six months lead time for blooms so I better put it on my calendar for January.

While I won't say they are now thriving, they're doing better than the boulevard elm, which last week got tagged by the city for removal. I won't miss all the tree seedlings it drops throughout the garden, but we'll certainly miss that welcome shade. It's the second elm we've lost since moving in and the fourth big tree to go down on this end of the block.

Bye bye, elm. This is never a sign you want to see on your property.