Hot Cocoa Roses – Yarn, Books & Roses

Return to the Garden

Spring was challenging this year. It was colder and wetter than usual, with lots of windy, stormy days. I wasn’t able to get out to work with the roses as I usually did in past years, but I did manage to pull up the worst of the weeds and dumped some Miracle Gro on the front flowers one day. Really, there was some rose neglect going on, for sure.

I guess the Miracle Go, cool days, and all that moisture was what the front flower bed needed. The miniature snapdragons came back from last year and I’m pretty sure that there are more plants than I put into the ground, so some are seedlings. The roses look better than I’ve ever seen before!

When I went shopping for the front roses I looked to see what was available and then checked the list of recommended roses for Colorado published by Colorado State University on the nice little pdf in the above link that gave hints for successful planting. These roses, picked to go with my house, are called Hot Cocoa. They are floribundas, so there should be more blooms following these beauties.

The roses in the back garden were finally rescued from the overgrowth of weeds one afternoon a couple of weeks ago, and look what emerged!

The Princess Alexandra of Kent rose is producing the largest blooms that I’ve ever seen on this plant!

This rose bush, Princess Alexandra of Kent, has never looked this good before. The blooms are so big the plant is having trouble supporting them, and this rose bush never got fertilizer. It has to be the cool, wet spring.

MacKenzie and I have been working diligently in 30 minute increments to get weeds out of gardens, and the most astounding discovery has been what happened to a virtually unloved rose along the back fence. Seriously, this is a rose that “went wild” when the original grafted rose died and the roots took over. I kept cutting back the runners, pulling it out of the ground, whacking it back into a reasonable rose size, and basically losing the battle with this rose that is determined to live.

Please allow me to present the “One Rose to Rule Them All” that has taken over the back garden.

That is all one rose plant that has grown immensely in the prime rose growth conditions of the last couple of months. I have now surrendered to fate, pulled the rose all back and attached the canes to two trellises and the top of my garden swing. Clearly, this rose will be growing down the fence in the years to come.

Did you notice the rotting seat to the swinging garden chair? Ugh. It is all nasty and sagging these days and clearly needed to be replaced. This week I cut the seat off and went to work to replace it with something that will allow me to return to my garden where I can read and knit in the presence of the One Rose to Rule Them All and the other flowers that are flourishing this year.

I warped up the seat of the chair with 20 lb clothesline that was advertised as “sag-resistant” and “easy to knot” after detaching the frame of the seat from the swing.

I cut lengths of line to do the weaving and knotted each line to the frame after weaving it through the weft.

I made sure that the seat was really taut so that it wouldn’t sag when I sat in the swinging chair. I reattached the seat to the frame and then lashed on another clothesline as “warp” across the seat back and then called it quits. If I need to weave in more pieces of line I can do it later, but I’m thinking that just the warp across the back will be enough to make the swinging chair function the way I want it to.

Ta-daa! It is done, the seat is absolutely perfect (not even a little sag!), and I am back into my garden.

Did you notice the weeds? Sigh. It is endless, truly it is. I’m resolved to not overdo things and will continue to work my way through the gardens, little by little, 30 minutes at a time, and day by day my yard and the gardens are looking better.

Between weeding sessions I will be hanging out in my garden swing, knitting away, with my beautiful roses. My cat MacKenzie will be sleeping in his garden, and hopefully the dog next door will be behaving herself.

This week the heat finally arrived and we hit the 90’s. My scleroderma joints are happy with the warmer weather, I continue to flourish with the new drug changes, and I can finally knit outside again. Yippee! The lavender plants and yarrow are covered with buds, and I have lots of perennials that need to be freed from the weeds.

I am back in my garden people! Life is good.

Crazy Knitting

Yep, I am totally knitting on the wild side; I hit the stash last week and pulled out some Crazy Zauberball in the wildest, hottest colors I had. Sometimes you just need to have some zing in the knitting, you know.

It seems like forever since I made something for myself. I made mitts to give to scleroderma patients, I’m still working on the PuppyPaca yarn for my friend Deb, and I have several more alpaca projects to finish for Alta Vida Alpacas. Last week I kind of snapped, found the Crazy Zauberball, and decided to make some fun things for myself. Check out these little bed socks: fun!

Socks — This yarn is Crazy Zauberall, and it is so rewarding to knit with. It is pretty light weight and knit a little loosely in this pattern; perfect for bed socks. Then there is the lace… These Om Shanti socks are from the Socktopus book by Alice Yu.

The heels and toes are knit with a short row technique that really made the toes strut their stuff. Ravelry notes are here.

I have enough yarn left over to make a pair of mitts to wear in bed too. The colors of this yarn just make me happy. I will have to make the mitts for sure.

Mostly the gardening has been on hold this week. It has really warmed up over the last few days and suddenly roses started blooming. Here are the first ones to open…

The Hot Cocoa roses by the front door are doing great. I covered them several times this spring with blankets supported by tomato cages between the rose plants. All the attention has paid off big time! As I was leaving for a doctor’s appointment I glanced at the front of the house and there was the bloom!

Home Run Rose — My Home Run roses by the driveway are now almost 3 feet high and suddenly they also began blooming. These guys will bloom all summer!

The backyard gardens are still jungles, but it rained hard last night so I’m hoping to weed out another flower bed tomorrow morning. How lucky that plants are patient.

Cat asleep on shawl — Kitty revenge can be quite a thing: MacKenzie still hasn’t gotten over the washing of his blanket. He spends very little time on it now, and has taken to sleeping on my “Waiting for Rain” shawl. He’s so sweet I’m letting him keep it for now.

One Crazy Zauberball project just isn’t enough right now. As soon as the bed socks were done I grabbed another ball and cast on another project just for myself.

Yarn — May I present the yarn for a Solaris shawl by Melanie Berg. The shawl is supposed to use 5 different MadelineTosh Unicorn Tails (in five different colors), but I decided to use this wild Crazy Zauberball yarn for the colored sections. There are at least 5 different colors in there; I can always pull off yarn to get to another color if I need to as the colored sections are pretty short.

So why did I snap and start the crazy knitting for fun? The truth is, I’m somewhat miserable these days. For reasons I don’t understand June is the month when my illness decides to get particularity ugly on me. For the third year in a row I just feel pretty darn sick. My muscles and joints hurt, I’m dizzy, my gut is misbehaving, I’m running a fever, my arms and legs have developed edema… I got out of breath and had to use my inhaler while winding a ball of yarn last Wednesday at my knitting group. I’ve been in to visit doctors twice already this month, and really, there isn’t too much that they can do. I’m in a flare for sure. Mostly I don’t leave the house much, but I can still knit.

You see why I broke out the Crazy Zauberball? Bright happy colors that change quickly. How can I not smile while knitting lime green and deep rose? This month I totally need some knitted hugs of happiness, and Zauberball delivers big time.

Got to go. I’m at the part of the shawl where I start knitting in some crazy color. Bright purple! Woohoo!

Have a great weekend everyone!!

Return to the Garden: Hello Slugs, I’m Back!!

Summer heat has arrived, I’m feeling better, and it is definitely past time to attend to the needs of the garden. Yesterday I weeded out front in the shade of the morning and then mowed that lawn in the evening (well, I actually mowed only half of the lawn. A neighbor then arrived and took the mower away from me to finish things up. I love my neighbors!!) Look at what has been happening out front while I was engaged in an indoor scleroderma-induced slug-fest.

Rose Bush. — My new roses (Hot Cocoa) that I planted a couple of months ago burst into bloom!

Roses — This is what the blooms look like as they open. I bought these roses as they are recommended for my location (Colorado, USA) even though I wasn’t completely sure about the color. I’m really pleased with the dusty orange color now.. Look how healthy those leaves look! Let’s hope the grasshoppers don’t notice…

Ice Plant in Bloom. — The ice plant that I planted along the front walk has also gone into overdrive. The color made me so happy I didn’t even mind pulling the weeds!

This morning I moved into the back yard with the cats to see what I could accomplish in a couple hours of coolness and shade before the afternoon heats up. Oh dear, it is somewhat of a jungle, and the cats have been running wild.

Cat in Grass. — Guess I need to mow this lawn too. See how intently MacKenzie is looking upward? He’s watching the squirrel the cats had treed earlier this morning after chasing it all over the yard.

Cat nesting in plants. — Yellow Boy has been busy building nests in several locations in the yard and the garden.

Cat in Yarrow. — The yarrow he’s nesting in is all over the garden and I need to rip most of it out. He was so cute I just let him have it today. Wait a minute… I think yarrow can be used to dye wool. Maybe I shouldn’t rip this out yet…

Pincushion flower — My pincushion plants have spread like crazy and the blooms are looking good! Please ignore the grass in the photo. That’s what I did and I feel much better for it. 🙂

Napping Cat — MacKenzie has also staked out a nice shady location to nap in near the cat mint. He is my good boy: he’s sleeping on dirt and not in the middle of a plant. 🙂

Things are looking much better than I thought they would. I weeded like crazy, filled up two garbage sacks, and then planted some new flower seeds in one garden where a rose died over the winter. By then the day was heating up and I was starting to feel a little dizzy again. Time to head back into the house to rest up for afternoon knitting and lawn mowing later.

The best part of the morning? I didn’t see a single slug!!

Resolution Roses

On New Year’s Eve I made some resolutions. I’ve been keeping up with most of them, but there were a few that were one time deals that had to wait for the right time of the year. Now that spring is here it is time for me to address one of the big ones. The roses at the front of my house are just awful. They were really nice roses for several years, and then they got a dose of bleach when my house was painted, and the extreme rainfall of the last two years was too much for them to handle. They struggled and what did manage to grow was munched by every passing insect. Ugh!

Sad rose garden. — Ugh! This is what the rose garden looks like now. Sure, I can weed it and put in some bedding plants, but the roses just aren’t doing well anymore. Time for them to go!

I have changed my landscaping around the house and had new rain gutter installed. It is now time for me to rip these roses out and to replant them with some others that are hardy, full of blooms and resistant to insects.

Off to my favorite nursery I went to look at roses. Here’s what I was looking for.

Decoration on house. — My house is pointed a creamy white with gold trim. I have rust colored gingerbread trim and this happy sun above my kitchen window. I decided I wanted floribunda roses that were deep rusty orange.

Rose in the ground. — Here’s one of the new plants in the ground after a good soaking. The graft point on the bushes are about 3 inches below the ground to help the plants survive our winters.

The weather here in Colorado will be warm all week except for a couple of day of rain. These guys should have a nice week to make a good start. Welcome to your new home little guys!

And don’t play nice with the grasshoppers!!