Seedling's first flower!

Well, at long last, the first flower of my little rose seedling has opened!

Its mother looks like this:

And the daddy looks like this and boast the strongest fragrance of any rose I know:

And here is the first flower of their little baby:

It is a bit scruffy looking, but that will probably change as it matures. The first flower of a new rose seedling usually has fewer petals than the blooms from a mature plant, and the extra petals can significantly change the form and look of the overall bloom.
The good news is that the fragrance is outstanding! To my nose, almost as strong as its delightful father, which is saying something.

This cross resulted in about what I had expected, but that isn't always the case. Whenever you make a cross, odd, unexpected stuff pops out. Sometimes it is good, sometimes not so much. But I got lucky this time with one of my other seedlings from the same cross. It germinated much later, so no flowers yet, but it has stunningly lovely blue-grey leaves, very very like Rosa glauca. Totally unexpected color, and very welcome! I can't wait to see what the flowers look like. Probably pink, like its sibling, but it could be different. In any case, I'll have to cross it with a bunch of my other favorite roses. Wouldn't a dark, rich, smoldering red flower look stunning on a bush of those leaves?

The mystery, discovery, and joy of breeding roses

All my roses are covered with different colored strings!

Why strings? Because, after nearly a decade, I've become re-interested in rose breeding, and all those little strings are marking developing hips I pollinated over the past couple weeks.

Roses were my first love when I got seriously into gardening and breeding as a teenager, but somehow the romance faded and I focused on other things. The, last year, on a whim, I made a couple crosses between some of my very favorite roses. And once I had seedlings germinating, all the excitement and joy of the relationship when it was new came flooding back, and I knew I had to start crossing them again.

Now I've got this, perhaps the most exciting thing there is in the world. The first bud on a seedling rose. Inside that tiny bud is a flower, never been seen before in the world. I'm hoping, hoping, it will be fragrant  and richly colored, but I don't know. No one knows. This new rose awaits discovery. And next year, I'll have LOTS more mysterious new roses unveiling their unique beauty for the first time before my eyes. Ah, the JOY of rose breeding!

Frilly, fragrant, floriferous dianthus

I'm a big dianthus fan. It is one of those genera with seemingly a billion species, and lots of them are really cool. But my current favorite is Dianthus 'Rainbow Loveliness'

They take the typically frilled dianthus petals to a new extreme, creating a cloud of lace when in full bloom! And they don't mess around when it comes to blooming either.

This mass in my back nursery bed (holding space for plants I'm trying or just don't know where to put) has been blooming like this for a couple weeks. What's more, they're fragrant. A sweet, clear spicy fragrance... if you could bottle it unchanged into a perfume, and you'd make a fortune.

I grew my plants from seed -- which was prefectly easy and straightforward. The first year, they bloomed a little, but now, in their second year, they are REALLY showing me what they can do. I want more. Lots and lots more!