Clear Vision In A Vase On Monday May 23, 2016

Welcome to my blog, May is living up to all expectations for glorious flowering, indeed many flowers are 2-3 weeks early, like the roses.  So the easiest flowers to choose today for my Monday vase for the addictive meme, with the challenge to find flowers in your garden to plonk into a vase, hosted by Cathy of Rambling in the Garden, are of course roses.  15 or so years ago I collected a lot of Old Garden Roses (OGRs), from various sellers of own-root roses, including the fabulous Sequoia Nursery owned by Ralph Moore, hybridizer as well, who ran his nursery until over 100 years of age, and who had an amazing variety.  I also collected a lot of minis when Justice Roses went out of business.  I'm sad to say that I lost most of the mini's, I think rabbits ate many of them down to nubs in the winter.  For a while they made a delightful miniature rose garden.

Today I am linking with-

Today's flowers hosted by Denise

In a Vase on Monday hosted by Cathy

Macro Monday 2 hosted by Gemma and Mystical Magical Teacher

For my first vase I am using a newer rose, the very fragrant Scentimental, striped roses were another collection of mine.  Also newer Dublin Bay, a gorgeous deep red climber which also lasts a long time on the plant or in a vase but mine has no fragrance.  It was a slow grower but is big now.  Also in the vase is an OGR, Reve d'or, which gets paler as it ages.  The vase is Delft, not very visible, from a garage sale-

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Reve d'Or outdid herself this year-

My second vase includes a red Rhododendron, another major May-blooming species.  The red ones bloom last and are not as vigorous for some reason, but are also planted in poor shady locations. The vase is one passed on from my mother-in-law, with its own rose decorations.   Also in the vase are the fragrant OGR Hybrid Perpetual Baronne Prevost- the larger bloom with the quartered pattern, and the very prolific but rather short-lived in a vase Old Tea Monsieur Tillier, which lives up to its reputation of being very tough flourishing in spite of being planted on our inhospitable front bank-

Another unbelievably vigorous and productive bloomer is Madame Plantier, an Alba hybrid.  She was hard to deal with but The Motorcyclist built me a large trellis enclosure for her with some cut tree branches that does well to hold the canes up.

Another tough rose that manages to flourish on my unwatered front bank is the OGR Rambler Celine Forestier, not only covered with small flowers now but one that will repeat bloom occasionally all the way to fall.  The buds start out a lovely peach color and fade to white-

 Here in a charming little vase from the thrift store-

The vase makes me think of weddings, so I am including a photo of my son when he was in my sister's wedding at the age of 5, I made his vest, bow tie and short pants-

He is now a computer programmer and has 5 kids ages 4-13.

Well, in closing I have to say that I've learned the hard way that the blue light of computer screens and TV's has a detrimental effect on the back of the eye, and have developed some problems related to Age Related Macular Degeneration, so an obvious thing I can do to help slow down or stop this process is to do less on my computer, though I try to use UVEX golden yellow glasses over my reading glasses to filter out the blue light, when I remember to use them. Anyway the result is that I am going to drop out of regular participation in the weekly blogging world, though it has been fun to have a creative outlet, and meet so many other fun bloggers.  To use my time otherwise I'm trying to get back into regularly playing my keyboard and even hopefully get better as an accompanist.  My paternal grandmother Edith was my childhood inspiration, she was a concert caliber performer of Chopin and Beethoven music, which I got to enjoy as a child when she visited.  She was my inspiration to play the piano.  She was also a church organist and taught music lessons, in fact she was walking home from her bus stop from teaching a lesson on the last day of her life when she fell and had a stroke and passed on at around 81, what a way to go.  She is probably making beautiful music in Heaven, one of my fond memories is playing my violin with her to the song, Jerusalem, the Holy City.  So have fun out there in blogging world, I appreciate all of you who have followed me and faithfully visited and commented here, I will miss you, and perhaps come back to write occasionally.   -Hannah

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