Garden Roses and Indoor Roses

Fancy Pants Miniature Rose - Two months ago

We had our first snow! It's officially winter time in Philadelphia.
It's been cold for a little while now, and all my herbs in the garden are dead, dead, dead. Well, all except the Rosemary, Sage, and Thyme who are somehow holding on.

Fancy Pants Miniature Rose - Yesterday

Also holding on is my beautiful Fancy Pants Miniature Rose. It's incredible. I'm really quite shocked by how beautiful this rose is turning out to be. I purchased it on a whim (From HeirloomRoses.com) and wasn't expecting much. When it arrived it was healthy, a month after planting it was yeilding blooms, but it was still just mediocre to my tastes. However! It seems like the more that this mini establishes itself, the more beauty and tenacity it has! Which is to be expected, but still, shocker! The foliage is now a deep dark purple-green color that is absolutely to die for! And the blooms? Legitimately deep red on the outside petals, and white with blood red tips on the inside. They were not this beautiful before!

Fancy Pants Miniature Rose, pictured on the left.
The pink is actually blood red in person, please excuse the poor cell phone photo! Better photo coming soon!

Additionally, the ground is now covered in snow, making the blooms stand out even more!

And the Gross adult Aphids... :(

Conversely, my indoor rose is not doing so well. I have kept indoor roses before, and never had much problem growing them indoors. However, they are usually miniatures, and I was living in a different climate at the time. This time, I brought my David Austin Charity Rose indoors so that it could establish itself a little more before weathering a harsh winter outdoors. I'm unfortunately experiencing a very large aphid problem.

After reading a lot on the wonderful GardenWeb.com forums, I made a "Garlic Spray" that I will be using on them tonight when I get home from work. From different people online I figured that I could mince (and then mash with the flat of the knife!) a whole garlic bulb, "saute" it in the frying pan with some water, add some spicy pepper (I chose to use ghost pepper powder, though I've read any spicy pepper or pepper sauce will do), and then let it all steep in boiling hot water like tea for an hour. I will then spray it on my roses (currently spending the afternoon on the porch) when I get home. Hopefully this mixture will work, because they're pretty nasty! I also plan on doing some serious pruning this evening.

David Austin Charity Rose - 1 month growth
(Ring for size reference)

David Austin Charity Rose - 6 months later
(The single tall stem has been trimmed all the way down twice.)

Garden Update

The general property needed a lot of heavy clean-up,
so this was the plan I used to do it. Garden Palanner

I began my very first full sized garden this year in early April and May. I had always helped out with my Dad's vegetable and herb garden when I was a kid, so I know a thing or two about plants - I just never have done it by myself outside of potted plants in my apartments.

Since starting all the work of ripping out the old garden/overgrowth & planting, it has really taken off and just grown like crazy. So I thought I'd share a little progress report here.













When I started, it was really out of control. (Pictured left and bottom) The previous owner had planted some kind of "wild flower" garden with "decorative grasses" and an herb or two. It was let go and things basically started choking each other out and it looked like a severe hot mess. My friend, Kao, came over and we ripped the entire garden out to the roots.

Kao kicking some grass ass.

This decorative grass "thing" took us 4 hours
to get out of the ground. Literally. We were both filled with more than a little malice towards it by the end.
There was quite the victory party when it finally came free.

I then got to do the fun part! Plant shopping and ordering!

I planned a rose and herb garden with a few decorative flowers.

I got all of my roses from Heirloom Roses.com

The miniature roses are Denver's Dream, Flawless, and Fancy Pants. The full size rose, currently potted and not in these early photos, is a David Austin Charity rose.

My herbs are from Rosemary House in Mechanicsburg, PA (http://www.therosemaryhouse.com/)

And the rest (Snap Dragons, Salvia, and Lantana) are from the wonderful people at Meadowbrook Farm over in Jenkintown, PA.

 In the bottom left photo, you can see how badly damaged the grass was before planting. I planted a lot of grass seed and spent some time cultivating it back to health. Spreading seed during a heavy rain, or right before, is a great way to keep the birds from eating it before it has a chance to get into the ground.

In the photo above, on the right, you can see just how tiny these plants were when I got them and first planted them. Fast forward at least a month, and I started seeing a ton of growth. I made many attempts to take photos that showed the grand scale of it, however, couldn't. I decided to do a youtube video and you can see in this where the growth got to. This was my first self filming ever, totally awkward, but you get the info about the garden, so be nice! :P

And since then I've had a great number of beautiful photo opportunities in the garden.

And Finally, another youtube video covering just how large my garden has grown. We've been getting a lot of rain over the last months. Not all day, every day, but the kind that rains at least a little bit almost every day or every other day. I haven't had a lot of time in the garden because of it, and because of vacation. Now that things are cooling off a little bit, the rain isn't so often, and I'm home more I have a lot of time to do the trimming and clean up. However, I wanted to show via youtube just how big everything has grown before I cut a lot of it back. 

I apologize for the poor quality of this video. :/

Anyway! I've spent this evening doing a lot of summer clean up. I'm going to give the garden at least a week to fill in a little more, and will have another higher quality video up soon. And definitely more photos.

Proper Hello

I apparently only got around to talking about one aspect of me/my life when I started this blog. Oops! A little more about myself, I suppose..


Other than the modeling I do a lot of other things: 


I own/run an Etsy shop that sells a lot of my personal hand made and original art jewelry, some of my own photography, some custom hats, and eventually I'd like to make fashion level and wearable art style wedding dresses. ^_~ 

These are available for purchase at my etsy shop.

I also garden - a LOT. There will be a lot of photos posted on here of and about it.  For now you can check out my youtube video walk through. (It's my first ever vlog, so be kind!)

I also design and sew custom clothing orders - for example, I just completed a very fashionable and custom beige lace dress with custom vintage belt for a client. 

And! I'm a noob foodie. Myself, my boyfriend, and our roomie tend to go out 4-5 nights a week. Which is a lot! But Philadelphia has some incredible food, locations, wine, and craft beer to enjoy! I plan on reviewing a lot of my favourite local places and some new ones along the way.
In the mean time you can check out my google map of some of my fav great local places. 

(Taken at Theresa's Next Door)

(Note: That middle cheese was easily my favourite. Mmm, ash flavor.)

My day job? I'm a personal assistant to the property manager of a local VIP style office center. I enjoy the organization and the relationships with the tenants, though like all work places there are "those days." And I certainly don't get paid enough, though I'm pretty sure it is normal for someone to say that, haha.