I Should Figure Out How To Organize My Photos

It's been raining here in Seattle recently, and typically on these cold rainy days I open up some of my photo files and look my garden pictures. Going through them today I realized that I really need to sort out a way to keep these photos organized and to keep track of my rose breeding record.

I have been taking pictures of my seedlings and keeping records of their size and color in my notes, but I don't have a way yet to combine the two...

But anyhoo, back to the roses. This is the first flower I got in July 2010:

Just looking the pictures I think this is pretty.

In fact, I got several apricot flowers this season.

Next year, I need to come up with a better way to organize everything. I'm not really that good at keeping my records intact but I think I'll have to suck it up and create a database that I can put both the pictures and the data in before I forget.

Hope everyone is doing well!

So Far, So Good

I think this is my best seedling from 2008 so far.

This is the kind of rose I was looking for and I'm very excited to see how it matures.

The flower starts out with deep, pink outer petals cupping inner tan-colored ones (the inner petals actually have a color very much like milk tea). I really like the outer pink color shifting to apricot and gradually to brown in the center.

As time goes by, the pink fades to a nice greyish-pink. Since the seedling tends to put out multiple buds per stem, it ends up with a really nice combination of different colors as the flowers fade.

The fragrance is of grapefruit with a hint of semillon. It's very intense - one small flower will fill a room with its lovely perfume.

The plant seems very vigorous and produces lots of bud clusters. The new leaves and stems are purple-red and turn to deep green. The plant is very clean, free from any disease. This is a second-year plant and right now it's growing in a two-gallon pot.

I am very happy with this one so far, and I'm planning to put it in the ground this fall and see how it does.

In fact, I like it so much I used its picture for the banner of this blog. :)