Flowers to take Note of

The white rose across the back of my vegetable garden is City of York, Climber, 1945
Tantau, Germany.
'Professor Gnau' x' Dorothy Perkins'
This is one of a few climbers that I would encourage any Pennsylvania garden to have.  It is vigorous, (mine is only 4 years old), and yes, all the white roses you see across the back of my veggie garden is simply one rose!  It stretches across at least 20 feet of fencing wire.  Even though it does get blackspot, it is so vigorous it will just push past the fungus and keep on looking incredible without being sprayed.  Even when not in flower this rose is stunning.  It does rebloom several times in a season.  And you gotta love that fragrance!  It has a wonderful spicy aroma that makes your mouth water.
My only disappointment with this rose is rooting cuttings.  When I bought this one from Roses Unlimited, I had plans on purchasing another the following year.  When the time came, Roses Unlimited told me that they had had some problems with their mother stock and didn't have the rose available.  I immediately cupped two lovely stock canes.  One of them died within the first three weeks.  But the other continued into the summer, still cupped and finally in October of 2010, six whole months after I first started the cutting, I finally planted it to protect it over the winter.  It had only one ½" long root on it and I seriously didn't think it would make the winter.  It not only did, but started growing slowly in the spring and continued to grow until now, it is about five feet long.  It now has a total of six main canes.  It gave me close to 2 dozen flowers this year and I hope that by next year, this baby will begin to really be as vigorous as it's mother plant.  It takes about 3 years for a rose to establish in my garden but then it usually shows its full potential. 
Below is a close up of these exquisite beauties.

 This is a flower that is so exquisite that I had to comment on it.  It is the flower of the
St. John's Wort.  The variety show below is called 'Brigadoon'.  About 4 years ago, this lovely variety of St. John's Wort was introduced and I thought it was so stunning I wanted to try it in my garden.  Each year for three years I bought three plants from Wayside Gardens and the fourth year they didn't carry it any more.  I was able to get one plant from Kehlm Nurseries, but I didn't see it in their catalog this year either.  So, I wonder what is wrong with it? 

I put all ten plants in the deep dry shade of our maple tree and it flourished wonderfully.  However, until this year it had never bloomed for me.  Could that have been the problem?  I don't know.  But, I do know that they lovely chartreuse colored leaves lend a great color contrast to an otherwise very deep shaded area.  In brighter light the leaves would be more gold but for my purposes, the chartreuse is enough.  The flowers are bright yellow and quite delicate looking.  Also they are much larger than I had anticipated.

I do nothing to it, ever.  Even when autumn comes, I leave the dead, brown leaves there and the new ones come up through in the spring.  It spreads wonderfully in the bed and is covering all the exposed dirt, allowing us at least one bed that doesn't need to be mulched.

"And so," I ask, "Where did these lovelies come from?"  Above are garden hollyhocks that grow in the "Wildflower" weed bed along a fence of other notable roses and elderberries.  One time, when we first move here, I had some wildflowers and black hollyhocks growing along this fence.  Now after several years of not see hollyhocks at all, a bunch of them made an appearance.  Most of them are yellow, but some this year are white.  These beauties will stand up to 7 feet tall and are great for that back fence since they are so easily seen.  These wild babies will be allowed to reseed at will since that's where they came from in the first place.

Below is a butterfly weed.  Curiously, it made an appearance this year in a flower bed at our well.  It is a large plant so it must have been there for several years without being noticed???  I honestly think I would have noticed the bright orange flowers.  But nonetheless, it made an appearance this year and because of the bright orange flowers, it wasn't pulled out.  We made sure that most of the weeds around it were pulled away so it has room to spread.  No, I didn't plant this one at all and am curious as to where it came from.  I did have one about 10 feet away many years ago, but it's been gone for a very long time.  It got here somehow and I'm happy to see it.  I hope to have it grow into a nice colony in the next years.