This summer I was busy working to get my Master Gardeners cert along with working full time at a local nursery. With that excuse in mind, I will tell you I didn't get any really successful crosses again this year!  Excuse number three, The weather may not have helped either with the very warm spring that transformed into a mostly cool summer.   In fact, it felt like summer lasted for no more than a week this year.  Needless to say it didn't help ( excuse.... excuse) with hip production and I ended up losing the crosses I'd managed to make.   I only ended up with selfs this year so I will have to be mostly content with them.  I am crossing my fingers My mason bees were pollinating my roses along with the fruit trees, so theres a scant chance something was crossed!  I wont be too picky for now, but next year things will be different!  I did have a list of crosses I was going to make but I suppose it will have to roll over until next year!   Right now I am in the thick of collecting hips and dividing seed I thankfully a number of hips from my own yard decided to ripen up so there is at least a somewhat of a rose project going on an I'v collected a few from a local rose garden to up my chances in getting a range of crosses :)  I have also taken a number of cuttings of some mini's I haven't grown before, (these cuttings were given to me)  and a few super cute fuchsias.  I think Im will also try my hand at daylily seeds this winter. I purchased a few packet of seed from a hybridizer online..growing them out sounds fun though I hope I stay focused on them as it will take them quite a while before they produce a bloom.....oh well heres to gardening projects turning indoors.

I'm a very hip thief!

This little guy is a bit slow growing but it is always covered in buds,  This rose is a sister seedling to my single blue for you seedling.  again very healthy foliage nice high petal count. This is the same rose earlier in the year with a button eye,  it has a sweet fragrance, new grow on stems are red and it branches quite nicely.  I'm very happy with this one and if nothing else it is going to be planted in my garden next spring. 

(below) This is a Denis Seedling, he gave it too me, because it didn't respond to Powdery Mildew spray.  I think it just needed to get outside of the greenhouse and breath a bit.  I'm really looking forward to seeing what this little guy will do next year.

I will mention some of these seedlings are from a friend and some are some of my older seedlings I didn't get anything off mention this last growing season I lost a lot of seedlings possibly due to high salt content with the Coir media I used or possibly fungus Gnats.  They are normally a irritating hinderance but they may have been devastating to new seedlings.   The only ones I have kept from this seasons batch are two pinks with a low petal count that are survivors and a low petal count yellow that keeps wanting to bloom.  I'll give them a wait and see but I'm not too excited about them.

 this is a Blue For you seedling That I love it have very healthy foliage no blackspot at all and it flowers in mass and as the petals age they become more and more blue.

 Heres a few of my favorite seedlings at the moment :)

 This is my first seedling of the year!  Good morning Dear, and her sisters are following!  I have all of six seedlings so far coming up and all but one are op's of "Pretty Lady".  Quite exciting, if they are anything like their mother I will be thrilled!......now if more of those seeds would start germinating!

                                               The trays are still looking pretty desolate...spotting the green is like searching for Waldo.

spotted!

                   

The seedlings are planted and springing up! Spring is coming and the blooms will follow!!! 

This past Saturday I enjoyed participating in the Tacoma Rose Society show, after a failed attempt to do so the previous year when I had only one show-able bloom, as my roses were between in bud or  in all stages of open and practically shattering.  My one bloom looking good enough to present was refrigerated, manicured with cotton swabs with it's leaves polished sat in the refrigerator the night before.  I was quite excited to have something to enter in the novice class but sadly during the night the rose was crushed under some toppled condiments, possibly due to a hungry husband rummaging for a nighttime snack or more likely my over zealous opening and closing the door checking on the rose, whatever the reason the rose didn't make it to the show. 

This year had its own set of difficulties, record high temperatures scalded most of my roses, in my arguably meager collection, as well as shrinking and bleaching the rest of the blooms.  I managed to find a decent bloom from Dream Come true, the same rose I had attempted to show the previous year. I also found a decent spray of Strawberry Crush along with a few of Austin's Sister Elizabeth blooms that somehow escaped the sun.  I even put together an arrangement of sorts not really ARS standard but I figured why not it was just for fun.  Well things went much better then last time.  I received the novice Trophy with Dream Come True which was quite a surprise! 

Don't you just love the Rose's name? Dream Come True is truly inspirational as it was produced by an amateur hybridizer John D. Pottschmidt. Dream come True was introduced by weeks roses in 2008.

This isn't the actual rose in the competition this one actually just bloomed today. I just wanted to show this guy off a bit :)