Pick The Flowers

It was a wet week. Almost 4" of rain and I didn't see the sun for four days.  A cold front is expected this week that will drop the temperature to the high teens. It's the dead of winter so the the perfect time to order seeds and tubers for this years garden. 

The cut flower mainstays in my garden are roses, zinnias, and dahlias. For about $20 in zinnia seeds I will harvest two buckets of cut flowers a week for about sixteen weeks--that is a good return on investment. Roses have a higher initial cost but flower over an even longer period with greater bloom variety and are fragrant. While dahlias have a modest cost but flower profusely in the fall and add a new beginning when the rest of the garden is fading. These three are the backbone of my cutting garden thus far. 

Since I've been growing flowers to be cut I'm seeing them in a different way. I was one of those well intentioned gardeners that told my children not to pick the flowers.  Why? The flower is not permanent--it lasts just a few days. So now when my grandchildren ask to pick a flower--I help them. And they run off to show what they have found.

I started thinking about the 'forbiddances' of picking a flower when I saw this sign. A rose garden with several hundred roses each with five and possibly ten or more blooms will not become barren if a flower or two or even a hundred are picked. I think gardeners are sending the wrong message.

These are the cutting beds in the church garden, They've been put to bed for the winter. The row of pots are roses from cuttings and purchased bands.

There are five camellias blooming now in my garden--three fall varieties and two spring flowering.  Here is the latest one to open.

Another Mahonia is blooming too.

This clump of daffodils is rushing the season. The cold weather this coming week will slow it down.

This weeks arrangement.