Last blooms and Frankenstein’s Garden

Thursday, Oct. 31, 2002 – 1:54 p.m.

2002-10-31 1:54

 

Last Blooms of the Season

Well, here it is the 31 of October and up until this week, the weather has been quite mild. However, it is now beginning to get cold and they are predicting a freeze this weekend. Therefore, I think that the current crop of blooms, such as they are, will be the last for the season. [sigh] I will miss them…

 

The weather has been quite rainy of late. For much of the month of October, it seems like my free time and the weather did not coincide very well. I think I got two spraying of fungicide in for most of the month. With the fairly warm wet weather, the black spot continues to be a problem… This past weekend, I did get a chance to spray (along with deadhead and mow the lawn) and noticed that even the Fairy was getting blackspot. The Rose de Resche is almost completely denuded so I am a little concerned about how it will fare over the winter. On the positive side, the Double Delight seems to be pretty impervious to the current batch of blackspot. It has got nice lush foliage.

 

I did deadhead last weekend and now, on reflection, I am thinking that maybe I should not have. We have this cold spell coming and the roses really need to shutdown. According to the books, one should stop deadheading and let rose hips develop. This development produces hormones (plants produce hormones, right?) that signal that new growth should stop and the plant should start going dormant. Of course, what this mean for my point of view is that the new growth will not harden off before it freezes so I may see more die-back than otherwise.

 

 

Catalogs

Well, one of the other things is the rose catalogs have started arriving… I have gotten three so far: Roses Unlimited, Wayside Gardens of SC, and Witherspoon. There are some very pretty roses in these catalogs but I need to figure out where I can put them before I go ordering… I guess it is time to start working on the next bed [grin]

 

Oh, I also had a complete brain fart last a week ago Tuesday… That was the 4th Tuesday of the month and therefore the Raleigh Rose Society meeting. I forgot. I had been at a conference in Clemson the day before and drove back from the mountains that tuesday. So when I got home at 5pm, I picked up Galahad at the vet (where he had been boarded) and went home. and stayed home. [sigh]

 

 

Yet another place to visit

Somewhere along the way this morning, I was surfing the web and came across a web article that talked about “Haunted Hollywood”. I clicked on one of the locations on the map and it turned out to be an entry about Boris Karloff’s graveyard:

(Frankenstein’s Garden):

 

What It Is: Boris Karloff’s personal graveyard

Where It Is: 2320 Bowmont Dr., Beverly Hills

 

Why It’s Creepy: Boris Karloff may have been a monster onscreen, but in real life, he was the quintessential English gentleman. (His real name was Billy Pratt.) When Karloff wasn’t stomping around a set with bolts in his neck, he could be found pursuing his real love: the rose garden at his Coldwater Canyon estate. Karloff’s passion for petals was so strong, he would often rush home from a day of filming to water his roses before sundown–even if it meant manning the hose while still dressed as Frankenstein’s Monster.

 

Karloff’s friends from the Vaudeville days enjoyed his garden as much as he did, and they would gather among the blooms to relax and reminisce. When his cronies began to die off, several asked to be buried in the garden. So, Karloff did the honorable thing: He complied with their last wishes and planted their bodies, one by one, alongside the rose bushes

 

Hmmmm… something to add to my list of things to do if I ever get to LA.

Leave a Reply