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For a weed rose Dr. Huey sure is pretty

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Dr. Huey is a rose that is commonly used as a root graft on Hybrid Tea Roses to make them stronger and possibly hardier.

If you grow roses, particularly ones that have grafted roots, you probably know that sometimes the root graft can grow it’s own shoots creating an odd looking rose bush with different colored flowers or that sometimes the graft root ends up taking over.

In my case the former owners of our home dug up their single Hybrid tea rose when they moved and I guess they left some of the graft root behind. Much to my surprise the following spring I noticed rose branches coming up out of the ground and realized that it must have been from their old rose. Of course it took me another year to realize that it was the graft root Dr. Huey.

I decided to keep the rose. After all, by accident, it was the first rose in my garden!

Dr. Huey seems to only bloom here once a year and it blooms on old wood so whether it blooms at all depend upon how harsh the last winter was. As a result my Dr. Huey weed rose only seems to bloom about every second year, but when it blooms it’s spectacular.

I don’t mind it’s red blooms one bit.

My Dr. Huey seems to bloom in late June. It’s blooms are long gone now, but not the memory of them.






My Hydrangea can’t decide if it’s pink or blue

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Last year I bought a Hydrangea plant for my garden.

I think I bought it in August or September so it didn’t do anything last year except settle itself into it’s new home. I believe it’s an Endless Summer Hydrangea and it was definitely labeled as a *pink* hydrangea.

It started to bloom about two weeks ago, and much to my surprise it’s flower clusters are not pink, nor are they blue … they are bi-colored!

Confused Hydrangea - blue and pink at same time!

My Hydrangea is severely confused!

I guess I’d better decide if I really want it to be pink or blue and then get out there and amend the soil appropriately. I believe you need to add lime to the soil if you want pink Hydrangeas and Aluminum to the soil if you want blue Hydrangeas. I’ll do some research.

If you have hydrangeas, did yours ever do this? Isn’t it strange?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

Plants I thought I’d lost were just dormant for a few years

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I had a little bit of a surprise this year garden wise. You see there were some plants that I thought had died last year or the year before as they never came up in the spring. Well this year, after our long snowy winter I got a surprise … the Oriental Poppy in my front flower bed started growing again after at least two years absence.

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The flowers were huge and they were on stocks that seemed to be much longer than I remember them being in the past. I guess my poppy had a good rest.

I also have some daylilies coming up in the front that I haven’t seen for a two or three years. The front flower bed tends to be dry and I think there’s lots of roots in it from the huge maple tree in my neighbors yard, but as I said we had a very snowy winter and I believe all that moisture must have helped bring some dormant plants back to life again.

The backyard is alive with roses! I took some photos yesterday but I haven’t had time to transfer them to my computer yet. I’ll post them in a day or two though. My yard is almost gawdy now that there are so many roses blooming.

The chives are just about done blooming, but while they were in their prime I managed to take a photo on an industrious bumble bee collecting pollen from the chive flowers.

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Is your garden full of blooms right now too?

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

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