In a Vase: a New Garden Arrives

Plants have been slowly making their way onto the back patio, waiting for me to begin digging holes, a task which was in turn waiting for temperatures to drop. That has now happened, and the very first official hole was dug and a rose bush planted several days ago.

I cut the bush back with a firm hand because it had been rather damaged in transit—not to mention having received a particularly dubious pruning job at some point. Now in the ground, it is already putting out new growth; and in the meantime I brought its one fresh bloom into the house and put it in a vase.

Here it is just before I cut it. The rose is “Paradise”. It deserves a post of its own at some point, but not today. The pink bits in the background are Salvia blooms, and they were indeed pink when I took the picture. More on that in a moment.

I didn’t have the heart to pull the rose out of the vase today; instead I left it and slipped other stems in around it despite it being past a very elegant prime. I’m feeling very sentimental about starting this garden, I admit!

I added some salvia stems. These came from another new plant, a Salvia microphylla which came home with pink flowers and, what with water and sunlight, is now producing red flowers, or very nearly. To make matters even more confusing it was labelled as “Hot Lips”, which it certainly is not, unless it goes through yet another metamorphosis and produces bi-tone red and white.

I’m watching, but I’m not holding my breath. Let us call it simply Salvia microphylla noID.

There was a sense of urgency in bringing home an autumn-blooming salvia because a pair of hummingbirds has arrived in the vicinity, and I want to encourage them to stay around. I’ve not seen them on the salvia yet, but the butterflies have certainly been enjoying it, and the hummers are still out and about, so it’s a start.

Along with the salvia I added some flowering rosemary to the vase.

I picked this rosemary plant precisely because it was flowering heavily at the garden center. In my earlier garden I had a rosemary hedge of sorts, and I found that one plant in it flowered reliably but none of the others did, despite the fact they were all theoretically the same cultivar. I love rosemary in bloom and so do the pollinators, so this time I decided to select the one with lots of flowers.

The other blooms in the vase are Catharanthus roseus, the so-called annual vinca. The lavender version has already featured in a vase, but this time I added a rosy red one as well.

It was a struggle to get this post up today as my laptop kept crashing. Happily it seems to be only the result of a ridiculous resentment of said computer toward its own photo gallery app, rather than the immediate demise of the whole system. Anyway, it is still barely Monday here as I complete this, joining with In a Vase on Monday at Rambling in the Garden.

Enjoy your week!