Pasque Flowers and Morden Roses

One of the first flowers to bloom in my flower bed is my beautiful pasque flower. It looks a lot like a crocus, but darker purple.

We got a skiff of snow last night, but it quickly melted by 10 am this morning. We got quite a bit of yard work done today. my husband worked on the veggie garden, digging out weeds and re-edging it with large 4 by 4" logs. I dug grass in huge quantities out of one flower bed today, plus removed a lot of white daisy clumps that are trying to take over.

Good news! All 4 of my rose bushes survived the winter and show signs of life!! Having spent so many gardening years living in northern Manitoba, I never had much success with roses. Now with the climate a bit warmer here in central ALberta,(zone 3 A) I'm thrilled to grow roses!

I have 3 of the Morden rose bushes which were developed in Morden, Manitoba and are winter hardy on the prairies; Morden centennial (a medium pink blossom), Morden blush (a pale baby pink), and my newest one Morden Fire Glow ( a beautiful orangey red). I also have a Winnipeg Parks rose bush, which is very hardy as well, and its a deeper pink than the others. Out of these 4 rose bushes, the Morden Blush is the most prolific bloomer and has blossoms for most of the summer.

The only down side (and isn't there always a down side?!) is that the pale pink flowers fade to almost pale white in the hot sun of July. The Winnipeg Parks blossoms are a very pretty color, but it doesn't seem to get as many blossoms, or bloom for as long as the Morden roses.

I have high hopes for the Fireglow. It spent most of last summer in a pot on my deck and only had a few flowers, but it was still a pretty small plant. The blossoms lasted quite a long time, though. I planted it in my flower bed in September and covered it with mulch and peat moss and then put a big pot on top with a brick on it to hold it there through the winter. It is showing some green stems now and I'm hoping it grows well in that spot and gets lots of blossoms.

I have a multitude of plants and seedlings in pots now that are destined to be planted outside eventually, once the weather warms up for good, but right now I'm carrying them all in and out, onto the balcony off the living room every day to start hardening them off. (A bit of a chore but well worth the effort.:)

There are 3 pots of large cactus dahlias, 3 pots of canna lilies and 2 pots of calla lilies all of which I over-wintered in bags of peat moss in our laundry room.

There are 8 geraniums as well. I dug them up last fall and put them in pots in the living room. I have lots of big windows on two sides with east, southeast and west exposures, thus lots of sun, so they all survived and some even bloomed during the dreary winter months!

I also started a few things from seeds: I have a couple of pots of pink lavatara, some bachelor buttons (also called cornflowers), some hollyhocks, and some Red Durango marigolds (not up yet) and castor bean plants (not up either...) Supposedly if you plant castor bean plants in your flower beds, it deters the pocket gophers from digging tunnels near then as they are poisonous. The best deterrent for the pocket gophers seems to be our cat Phoenix, though. He has caught (and eaten) 2 of them already this spring!

I started 4 spaghetti squash plants from seeds as well, which I saved from a squash that we ate for supper over the winter. I'm hoping to give them more sun this year so they don't get as leggy as last year.

I planted 4 bartlett pear seeds in a pot, too, in the hopes that one might sprout so I could grow another pear tree in the yard. We have one lone pear tree at one end of our acreage which gets hard green little pears, but they never mature into anything edible. My understanding is that you need to have at least 2 trees to cross pollinate, then maybe they will produce some decent fruit. But sadly it could also just be that our growing season isn't long enough here.... :(

But the pear tree does get a multitude of gorgeous blossoms in the spring and for that reason alone is worth having! :) I'll post photos once that happens...