My Talisman rose finally started to bloom a few days ago. This is the third and final bloom of the three that were on it this time around:






As was expected, it's pretty, but nothing spectacular... yet. These blooms were actually nicer than I expected. Once this plant is mature and planted in the ground next spring, it should be magnificent. Not bad for an 81-year-old rose :)

Well, for the first three weeks that I owned it, Talisman didn't do a whole lot except abort the two buds that were on it. It was obviously a bit stressed from its cross-country journey, and seeing as how May is our absolute busiest time of year, I really didn't feel like messing with it (except keeping it watered). Finally, I potted it up into a gallon container, drenched it with a mild fertilizer solution, and... it took right off :) After a couple weeks I decided to boost its fertilizer rate. Not a good move :( Roses are sensitive to fertilizer as it is, and this is such a small, immature plant that it proved to be even more sensitive than what I'm used to. So I gave it 9 or 10 days to adjust, and... it aborted another bud and just stopped growing.

*sigh*

Okay, so I drench its soil with clear water to flush out the excess fertilizer. A week later, my Talisman rose is starting to pick up steam again. Its leaf buds started to swell, so I knew it was going to be okay. After those four days of 90+ degree temperatures we had, it needed watered again, so I reverted back to my original fertilizer rate (a little less than 1/2 teaspoon of Jack's Classic 20-20-20 fertilizer per gallon of water, for those keeping score). Again, I drenched the soil with this solution to make sure the nutrients were balanced and the soluble salts weren't building up. Talisman is growing along quite nicely now, and should be blooming (finally!) in the next ten days or so. I'll try to post a pic or two when it does. I'm really not expecting much from these first blooms, as it is such an immature plant. Also, I know from the research I've done that this particular variety doesn't like extreme heat -- and it's growing in a black pot in full sun in a sweltering greenhouse right now! So the flowers will be less than stunning, in all likelihood.

For now, though, I'm concentrating on producing vegetative growth and getting the plant as big as I can as fast as I can. The beautiful flowers will come later :)

Updates to come...

Who needs air-conditioning when you have a motorcycle? Yep, I dug my motorbike out of the basement for the first time since 2006 (when I injured my leg). The dang thing runs just as good now as it did when I parked it. I don't know what the quality of Honda's bikes is like these days, but their engineers were really on to something back in the late '70s (my bike is a '79). As far as I know, my bike is even still on the factory rubber (tires)! It just keeps going and going and going and going...

In addition, I think I finally found this bike's "sweet spot" in terms of what it was designed to do: back country roads (including gravel roads) at 40 m.p.h. This is where it seems to be at its happiest, and where it runs at its very best. It was designed as a "Street and Trail" bike, and in the past I was trying to push it a little too hard in an off-road environment -- hence my injured leg.

The only thing it didn't like over the past three days that I've run it is the one time I tried a freshly "tar and chipped" road (Adair road, to be specific... and don't ask what I possibly could have been looking for on that road). It was a royal pain trying to keep the thing upright in those conditions. Other than that it has been a dream to ride.

It's a perfect little motorcycle to just tool around the countryside on :)

I guess I'm going to have to ask Kathy what's going on with Janet the next time I see her. This whole mess has gotten to the point of ridiculousness. Actually, it passed the point of ridiculousness about a decade ago. Something like this could only happen to me...

I can only hope that Mr. Fulton has a long, miserable, tortured life ahead of him for what he's done. He's certainly earned it.

All my life I've been workin' them angels overtime,
Riding and driving and living so close to the edge,
Workin' them angels - Overtime"

- Neil Peart (Rush), Workin' Them Angels

I may have to take back the things that I have said over the past couple years about Merle Haggard. He released a new album called I Am What I Am in April, and while it may not be the best album he's ever done, it is certainly one of the best he's done in recent years. Two songs stand out in particular: the lead-off track called I've Seen it Go Away, and especially the third track titled Oil Tanker Train.

When I heard Oil Tanker Train for the first time I got chills up my spine. Here is the Hag at his best -- singing about a tanker train that used to run past his parents' converted boxcar home (actually it was a converted refrigerator car). In the song he recounts how his Mama used to be able to feel the train coming before she could see it, and she would tell little Merle to get up to the window to watch it go by. He sings, "Oh, I loved that old oil tanker train." The song ends with him recounting how he woke up one Christmas to find a toy tanker train set up around the tree. Absolutely heartwarming stuff.

But what really sets the lyrics off is his delivery of them -- he literally sounds almost exactly like he did in the seventies, when he was at his peak. It is kind of a ghostly experience at first, and I can't really hear that the lung cancer hurt his voice at all. His phrasing is a little "jazzy" in a couple of the lines, but this is the Hag that I grew up with, and the man that I used to admire more than I can possibly tell you. If he keeps writing songs like this and stays off the friggin' dope he may yet win back my total respect.

I have also read a couple interviews he did recently, and he sounds like a completely different person now that he's sober. Again, he sounds like the Hag that I grew up with: full of wisdom & common sense. In fact, he didn't make a single mention of the government laser-beaming the ocean to draw in hurricanes!

It all started about 17 years ago. There I was, early in my rose-growing career, perusing the 1993-'94 Weeks wholesale rose catalog. There, towards the back of the hybrid tea listing, was an old rose called Talisman. Its breeder was listed as "Montgomery - 1929". Just like all the other roses in the catalog, this one had a full description, as well as a photo. Unfortunately, the photo was of a full blown-open bloom, so I really couldn't tell much about its appearance, other than it was a red/goldish-copper blend. But I was, of course, intrigued by the date of introduction: 1929. Here was a plant that was a living remnant of the Jazz Age.

A couple months passed and I was fortunate enough to be given Stirling Macoby's Ultimate Rose Book as a gift. Here again was mention made of this rose named Talisman. According to Macoby, the Montgomery Rose Co. asked and got six times the price of other roses for their Talisman plants. It was that unique in its day and time. Unfortunately, the photo in Macoby's book was no better than the one in the Weeks catalog.

The years passed and I continued to run across references to Talisman from time to time, but I never did see any decent photos of this rose, nor did I ever see one for sale anywhere.

Enter the internet.


Finally, while researching roses over at Helpmefind.com one night I found some decent photos of Talisman's blooms at the peak of perfection. It is no wonder that Montgomery charged so much for this rose; even by today's standards it is an utterly unique and beautiful rose. It was, in fact, one of the leading florist roses in its day, as well as being one of the most popular garden roses.

The next thing to do was find a source for a Talisman plant. Once again, enter the internet.

I managed to track down three or four vendors that were still propagating this old variety. All of the places I looked at grow their roses from cuttings on their own roots, not grafted as is the usual method. This didn't really worry me as I have propagated and grown my own hybrid teas from cuttings before. I finally settled on Rogue Valley Roses as my vendor of choice. So I placed my order early last week with the date of shipment to be on this past Monday, May 10th. It arrived on Wednesday, the 12th, and... it is a cutting alright, and a small one at that. But it's rooted and it's growing (even has buds), so it should be okay.

I'm going to run this little guy through a full bloom cycle in its current pot and then it will be potted up to a one or two gallon container. The eventual plan will be to pot it up into a 5 gallon (or larger) pot; that is where its permanent home will be. You see, these old hybrid teas aren't always as winter-hardy as the newer ones, so it only makes sense to keep it in a pot in the heated greenhouse over the winter months. This little rose plant is the single most expensive one that I have ever purchased ($31.00, including shipping and handling), and it's becoming an increasingly rare variety -- not something that I want to take a chance on losing over the winter. No, it is best that I preserve it. It is a remnant of an impossible-to-recapture time in American history.


I will try to post updates on its progress on this blog.

For the first time since the spring of 1982 -- twenty-eight years ago -- my body is completely free of nicotine. W00T! :)

Click on this photo to see it full size. It's incredible. Every time I see a photo like this, something deep inside me tells me that I was born way too late; that the era depicted in the photo is where I belong. And I don't say that lightly. Ever since I was a wee lad I've always been drawn like a magnet to the pre-WWII years of this country. Everything from the machinery of the era, to the music, the movies (Mary Pickford!), to the social mores has fascinated me. Needless to say, it has led to more than my fair share of depression over the years. It's also one of the reasons that I've always been so obsessed with Merle Haggard's music; Merle has always felt the same way. Brian Wilson (of Beach Boys fame) once said, "I just wasn't made for these times." I'm not a big Wilson fan, but that single sentence pretty much sums up my entire existence.

To me.