meandering about...

Well, I've had a bad couple of days actually... it's been hideously slow at work, and there's nothing like sitting in a truck in an empty parking lot for 45 minutes or so to put me in a peachy mood...

did have some rain this morning, not so much here at the house as west, but I got to see the rainbow. Now rainbows are extremely hard to take pics of, but here's the best shot...

Now obviously, the end of that rainbow is in that warehouse... which means that somewhere in that building they store a pot of gold. I considered going in and looking for it, but then I remembered that the pot of gold is traditionally guarded by a leprechaun... I hate to make blanket statements, but leprechauns are not my favorite group of people. They're notoriously sneaky, generally bad tempered, and to top it all off, mean drunks. And they just happen to be drunk most of the time. (I'm not judging, just saying...)

After some thought, dealing with those little varmits just to get a handful of gold coins that you can't even spend at the grocery store didn't seem worth the bother. So I moved on...

Finally ended up sitting in a city park in Farmers Branch, one of the communities North of Dallas... They have a very extensive rose garden.

This garden is planted with varieties that have the 'Earthkind' designation, which means they have undergone rigorous testing, and can survive the Texas climate statewide... In order to come up with this designation, the plants have to survive for four years with no commercial chemical or organic fertilizers and no pesticides. The testing gardens are allowed, and are encouraged to use mulch and compost. That's a pretty tough standard... Right now there's only about 100 varieties being tested, and aproximately 20 to 25 varieties that have made it...

Even with that tough testing, this is really the wrong time of year for roses here... they are at their best in the spring to early summer, then they slow down for a while and have a new flush in the fall, sometimes blooming right up to Christmas... we don't usually get our first big freezes until the first part of January. Still there's a couple that were going good... This one is called Polonaise and it's a shrub rose....

The next two pics are a floribunda named Eureka...

Roses aren't my favorite. Even with these tougher varieties, I'm still pretty sure they're just too fussy for me... but there are a few in this garden that might tempt me...

here's a link all about the Earth Kind roses, even a list of varieties and such:

http://earthkindroses.tamu.edu/

I'll probably put it over on the links tab at the right too