Roses I Don't Have Anymore

'Brandy'.  I miss 'Brandy's gorgeous bronzy-apricot flowers.

'Sunset Celebration':

'Sunset Celebration' I don't miss at all.  Lovely color, but poor form and little fragrance.  I have many other, better roses of that shade.


'Eden', the very romantic Romantica:

I miss the flowers when they were not ruined by Thrips, but not the incredible Rust that used to rain down from the leaves and stain the walkway orange.  The romance of Rust. 

'Royal Highness':

Beautiful bloom, all one or two of them, dreadful plant.  I understand 'Brides Dream' is much better, though not as fragrant.


'Hot Cocoa', with 'Festival Grass' Cordyline:

I miss the spring show of 'Hot Cocoa'.  Good Lordy Lord was it gorgeous in the spring.  Then it would get really really really tall and the flowers would get really really really small and have hardly any petals.  Never grew out of that.  I still have that Cordyline, and still love it. 


Some other plants and other things have gone, or thankfully remain.  I don't have as many "Dutch" Iris as I used to.  They seem to vanish after a few years.  Pity.



I don't have Water Lillies any more, either.  The koi started eating them.  Baby Koi are essentially 100% carnivore.  Adult Koi are mostly herbivore, and find Water Lillies delicious.  



The lily-gobbling Koi sure have grown.  She's a two-footer now. 



Still have Hoover, thank goodness.  Got rid of that carpet, though.  Thank goodness.



I used to like Palm Trees.  Now I hate them because I'm constantly pulling seedlings.  Weedy nasty things.  I still like them at the beach, though.  Just not anywhere in our neighborhood.  



I used to go flying with Beloved.  It was interesting, but I don't miss it.  I like being on the ground.  That's the Santa Monica pier:


 There's the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and Redondo Beach, where I once spent many a summer day, and the Goodyear Blimp, and the misty hills in the far distance are Catalina Island.



Don't have that Helictotrichon sempervirens any more, but I still remembered how to spell it!  With the hybrid Salvia 'Blue Hill'.



The freeways are still there, but I wonder how long they'll be free. 



Still have 'William Shakespeare 2000':



This little guy ain't so little any more.  I just got rid of that Anigozanthos hybrid this year.  It was finally exhausted.    Still have the 'Disneyland' rose in the foreground left, and glad of it.



Unlike the little guy, this Echeveria looks exactly the same as it did 5 years ago.  It has a different stem and root system, but otherwise it hasn't changed at all.  Hmmm...


That view sure looks different.  Newly planted areas have that distinctive tidy, bare, stunted look. 



Summer is a time to let the mind wander, to sit in the shade out by the pond, eat ice cold watermelon slices, and just not worry about anything for a while.  To remember Summers past, roses long gone, love ones lost, and loved ones still with us.  Warmth and sunshine, companionship and memories, and a cold slice of watermelon can be the whole world for an hour or two, and be enough. 
I still have 'Evelyn'.  She's still as gorgeous and as persnickety as ever.


Have a beautiful, relaxing day.