Before/After Rain

'Darcy Bussell', always a flower or two

An inconvenient feature of Blogger is that the order of photos changes if you upload photos in a group.  I planned a before/after rain narrative for this post. Blogger decided otherwise.  Since I'm desperate to get outside to garden, these are left in blogger-order.  It's glorious outside today!

 

After the rain, a rain-celebration trip to a favorite nursery.  I bought a few things.  Returned the "Please Close The Gate" sign before we left, because misread the price, thinking it was a lot less expensive than it was.  More on the things next post.  I'm in a hurry.

Beloved graciously agreed to take some nursery photos:

I'm carefully examining the "specialty succulents" section, which has exotic plants on occasion.  Not that day:

This was going to be the first photo of the nursery visit section, me celebrating the glorious winter visit to a wonderful nursery, but blogger had other ideas.

Let me at them plants! 

Ah here's the Before rain section, showing two of the three roses I got into the ground before the rain, two that I'd dug up last year and potted up to await replanting.  A 'Tamora' on the left, 'Moondance' to the right:

Here's the During rain part:  

We got wonderful rain, 2"+, after a dry January/early February.  Three waves of rain over 5 days leaving us a rain-season total on the  gauge of 13.97", not including the 2-3" missing due to a ladybeetle clogging the gauge back in...ummm...November?

We're now above our historic average (~13") for the rainy season.  Hooray! 

Happy garden, happy gardener.  A few last roses admired before I finished pruning....before the rain.

'Firefighter', always a pleasure to photograph because it perfumes the air so I inhale as I admire...mmmm! 

While 'Princesse Charlene de Monaco' had one gorgeous cluster of blooms at the top of a 10' cane (note to self: restrict the N for Charlene'). 

Delicious delicate range of colors.  Sweet perfume, too: 

The color range of the flowers reminds me of 'Gruss an Aachen'.

Blogger changed the subject abruptly--more and more Iris opening.  This was before the rain, too:

Also before the rain, and before I mulched, the 3rd rose I got planted, a new one called 'Light Years Away'.  Weeks Roses, I am sorry to say this, but your rose names have been an embarrassment for several years now.  Roses are not a children's sugar-stuffed artificially flavored, artificially colored breakfast cereal.

I gotta get back into the garden.  In haste...