Dr. Huey. I find this rose all over the place. Unfortunately, it’s because Dr. Huey is or was a favorite root stock for grafted roses. When the graft dies (as it mostly does in the cheaper roses), Dr. Huey shows it’s face. In my travels around our local area, I see it it many gardens, though I doubt that most folks realize the significance of it
And the unusual. Green Rose. The blooms are made up entirely of sepals instead of petals. The blossoms are green with a touch of red on occasion
Eileen’s knee continues to improve. Dinner tonight in Portland without the crutch. Still some pain, but we’re both beginning to believe that the injury was less than it could have been. She has an appointment on July 10 with the surgeon to check on progress.
Tiny bit of work on shawl this morning. Only 1/2 a round (though that’s over 500 stitches) completed before I headed out to the pile of hay that still needs to be moved. Day off today and another tomorrow before a full weekend of work.
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A long post….
More roses blooming on the RidgeTop.
Rosa acicularis, aka Prickly Rose. An amazing set of recurved thorns that seem to catch on everything. 
Rosa dunwichensis. A pretty little low growing white rose that was first ‘discovered’ near Dunwich, Suffolk not many years ago. 
Rosa eglanteria (syn Rosa rubiginosa) aka Sweet Briar Rose. A pretty little rose that’s considered a weed in some parts of the world. Grows quite sedately on our garden. Crushed leaves smell of Apple Cider. 
While Eileen won’t be running any marathons any time soon, her knee injury is progressing nicely. Still some swelling but not much pain and she’s slowly being able to move around a bit easier every day. We won’t know the full extent of the damage until she goes in for an MRI in about 3 weeks. Still, she’s feeling better and she’s determined not to let this completely ruin her summer.
Work. I’m convinced that the whole town knows when I’m working and they’ve made a pact to make my work nights hell… 
Even though I’m not supposed to be working full time, I’m going to be so close to a 40 hour week this week, you’d think otherwise. Monday was 6.5 hours, Tuesday was 9 hours, Thursday was 9 hours, Saturday and Sunday are scheduled at 8.5 hours each … Wait .. That totals 41.5 hours. And that assumes I don’t work extra hours this weekend and we have a State Baseball Tournament going on. Yes… Overtime…
Blobs. I’ve finally crossed over the 1000 stitch mark on the Feather and Fan Shawl, as you can see on the sidebar. But I didn’t knit a stitch today, as I couldn’t convince that 6.5 ton of hay to stack itself, which meant I got to spend the day man handling 90+ pound bales and restacking them in the barn. Ah.. The joys of farm animals…
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We both love Roses and especially the species and the less common. No Tea or Floribunda roses for us. And this spring, here in Oregon, seems to have been very much to the liking of our roses.
I spent part of the morning photographing the roses that are currently blooming up here and for the next few days I’ll post some pictures of our roses.
Moss Rose is an old garden rose from the late 1700’s. Called Moss Rose because of the bristles covering every part of the plant except the leaves. 
The Pink Moss Rose has a lovely rose scent and is very hardy.
The Striped Moss is another sweetly scented old garden rose. 
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Feather and Fan shawl is coming along nicely. I’ll be working on row 129 this morning. I held it to the window and Eileen shot over my shoulder. Pretty good idea of the look of the pattern.
Dead Spiders.. An unusually colored Columbine with an unusual name. Dead Spider Columbine is a uniformally grey-white colored, spurred columbine. Second year in our garden.
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The weather in Northwest Oregon has been horrible this past week+. Rain, rain, and more rain. Kind of disappointing after the previous weeks of warm, clear and sunny weather. There is a good side though. Not much need for watering the nursery plants outdoors.
Feather and Fan shawl is still progressing slowly, but I’m getting time each morning to work on it. Starting row 125 and 840 stitches around. I’m thinking about ways I can show something besides a scrunched up ball of knitted fabric. Maybe more later.
Work..Yesterday was my first day off after six straight days of work and five closes. We’re probably going to be shorthanded again the next couple of weeks as one of our counter ladies is about to be fired. She’s trying to cause troubles by spreading gossip about various people on the crew and in particular our main lead, Myssie. She told me in confidence that Myssie was doing a lot of complaining about my work behind my back and of course I asked Myssie about it the next day. The gossip was untrue, of course, and she went to the owner the next morning. Owner is not happy and I expect it came to a head Friday afternoon when gossiper showed up for work. I’ll probably find out the results this evening, as I’m scheduled to close tonight.
And I love this time of the year (when it’s not raining)… So many things growing and blooming and my camera and I are constantly searching out something new.
Primula auricula ‘Vulcan’
One of the showier of my small collection of Primulas. This was shot about a week ago and already the blossoms have faded and disappeared.
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First.. Categories is broken – Don’t click on those little links under posts, like Plants or Other Stuff. You’ll get a “Page Not Found” error. Sigh.. Working on it..
We had a little episode with my old man Jake today. He’ll be 18 the middle of June and has really started to show his age. This afternoon while doing our weekly house cleaning, we were herding cats from one end of the house to the other and he nearly collapsed on us. He was knocked over in the rush and for a couple of minutes he just lay there with his legs stretched out and his toes spread. When I finally got him to his feet he was very unsteady and it took many minutes before he could walk steadily. He seems fine tonight, but I’m going to have to start being a bit more gentle and easy around him.
Peonies.. Did I mention that my Peonies are starting to bloom? 
I purchased Paeonia peregrina as a seedling three years ago and this is it’s first year of flowering. Another species Peony, native to Italy, the Balkan peninsula, southern Romania, and central Turkey. Linked to larger photo.
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I’ve been dragging the Feather and Fan shawl with me today, out on a couple of errands and have managed to work nearly 2 complete rounds. Progress will continue to be slow, but I’m going to keep plugging away.
Nora Barlow Columbine (Aquilegia vulgaris ‘Nora Barlow’).
This has been my favorite of all the spurless Columbines. Cultivated for over 200 years, I forget how nice this little flower is until I walk into the garden each spring and see it’s prettly little pink and cream and green flowers. Last picture linked to a full sized shot.
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First.. There seems to be a bug in IE 5.something and 6.something that doesn’t render valid Cascading Style Sheets correctly, which means the side bar gets pushed to the bottom of the page. I originally thought it might be the 45 XHTML errors that were on the page, but I’ve managed to correct them all and the page validates cleanly now. As the theme author’s page views correctly in both IE 5.x and 6.x, it’s still something I’m doing. I’m working on it, though it’s not one of my high priorities. If you want to see how it’s supposed to look you can download free copies of Firefox or Opera.
Next.. Molly Bee asked about pictures of the Feather and Fan circular shawl. 
It’s getting pretty scrunched on the two circular needles I’m working on and it’s not very interesting right now. Currently on row 114.
Finally.. About 4 years ago, Eileen planted a Japanese Wisteria. 
It’s blooming for the first time this year. She was close to ripping it out, but I’m glad she held off. It reminds me of the Wisterias you see in old Japanese block prints.
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Work continues on the Feather and Fan circular shawl. At nearly 700 stitches per round, I’m only getting a single round done in the time I’ve set aside for myself in morning. Still it’s been considerably more than has been accomplished in the months past. And I’m enjoying the knitting again. That’s good.
My Peonies are starting to blossom. 
and a new one for me this year is Paeonia veitchii, a species peony native to China in the provinces of Gansu, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Sichuan and Qunghai. Blossoms are only about 4 inches across, nothing like the big blossoms of modern hybrids, but the lack of size is made up by the large number of open flowers.
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Our native Red Columbine is just starting to blossom.
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