While wandering about like lunatics at the Dallas Arboretum last week, we realized that one of the biggest problems with twilight is getting decent photos with my camera. I’m already acknowledging my deficiencies in the form, and these may or may not be cured with practice, training, or surgery. However, trying to get a good focus on an item that’s moving too fast to capture (such as the hummingbird hawkmoth we spotted feeding on sedum flowers) isn’t helped when you barely have enough light to see by.
This little trip also made me appreciate the inherent UV fluorescence of many flowers, including roses. Naturally, the Dallas Arboretum has yellow roses. Not only do they threaten to take your Texas Resident card away if you don’t have them in your garden in Texas, but all sorts of horrible things happen to you if you don’t keep at least one bush of them at all times. You can’t get decent seats at restaurants. The only spots in movie theaters are directly behind dolts who text through the entire movie. Your favorite bars suddenly become hipster hangouts. Worst of all, if you don’t keep them going, the only time you can get decent seats for a Texas Rangers baseball game is when the Rangers are doing worse than the Chicago Cubs. The Cubs.
So we found the yellow roses in the Arboretum. However, since anybody who develops a new rose cultivar can name it whatever s/he wants, take a look at who was honored with this variety?
Suddenly, I don’t mind yellow roses quite so much. It also makes me want to develop a variety of miniature black rose and name it after Ralph Steadman.
Julia Child is a great garden rose. I have two shrubs of it and it blooms like mad. I read that though she was no gardener, she selected this rose to be named for her. Said it looked like “scrambled eggs”……
Thanks to my hopeless ignorance on roses, I didn’t know this. Thank you very much for sharing that.