Different Color in Autumn

The orangey fellow is "Just Joey" and the pink (which whizzed out the camera's ability to track color) is "Electron." I never used to like pink and orange together, but combined with the bronzey new foliage -- they look pretty.

They, along with white "Honor" and lavender "Angel Face" and golden English rose "Graham Thomas" are the only survivors of my once 21-variety rose garden. Over the past 10 years, I've grown increasingly impatient with getting hooked by thorns and less enthusiastic about all the chemical crap I have to do to keep the roses free of aphids and mildew.

The above is not entirely true. There are two other roses growing on the back bank that have been marked for removal, but are still there. They are two climbers, and while they're beautiful, they grow like weeds and I can't get near them for maintenance. One will be replaced by a cherry tree.

The other one will just be removed so that it will stop beating up on the euonymus and nandina.

Bernie also says that the alstromeria must go. The heavy rains late last spring made them go heavily to foliage, lush and huge and thick -- up until the temps went above 90, and then that weighty mass of green just went limp and smothered itself. After that trauma, it only bloomed sporadically and for the rest of the summer, looked weedy as hell. Looks like I'm over my alstromeria phase as well.

Working with the Press, my time has now become more compacted when it comes to gardening. I need easy color with a forgiving habit. I'll take my mother's advice and enter into my geranium phase for a while.

The only problem with geraniums is that they are so damn hard to photograph. Will I have to resort to -- gasp -- film?????