{"id":826,"date":"2013-06-03T07:42:16","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T15:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=826"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:05","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:05","slug":"distant-drums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/distant-drums\/","title":{"rendered":"Distant Drums"},"content":{"rendered":"

DISTANT DRUMS<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Sound of Music<\/em>, a wonderful Rogers and Hammerstein musical, has a song in the first act called \u201cHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?\u201d in which the Mother Abbess of an Austrian convent muses tunefully about how to deal with an errant postulant.\u00a0 As fans of the musical know, Maria, the postulant, goes off to become Maria, governess for the many children of the aristocratic Baron Georg von Trapp.\u00a0 Singing, life lessons and romance ensue and the problem of Maria is solved when she forsakes the convent life to become Frau Georg von Trapp.<\/p>\n

If only real life worked out like that.<\/p>\n

Now I stand in my garden and wonder how I can solve the problem of \u2018Distant Drums,\u2019 one of the loveliest of all roses.\u00a0 The problem with \u2018Distant Drums\u2019 has nothing to do with aphids, fertilizer or bloom time.\u00a0 It has everything to do with the fact that while no garden should be without this singularly beautiful rose, many gardens are languishing in that state for a single reason\u2014it is impossible to describe the plant. \u00a0With apologies to Gertrude Stein, a rose is not always a rose.<\/p>\n

When it is out of bloom, \u2018Distant Drums\u2019 looks perfectly normal.\u00a0 Mine is about four feet tall and three feet wide with lots of glossy, dark green leaves.\u00a0 It is handsome in its upright habit and robust configuration.\u00a0 However, the key to its glory and indefinable allure is the flower color.\u00a0 The rose is classified as a \u201cmauve blend,\u201d which is, perhaps, praising the shrub with faint damns.\u00a0 Some vendors group it into an ambiguous category like \u201cRoses of Unusual Color.\u201d\u00a0 This is an apt yet meaningless description that places \u2018Distant Drums\u2019 in the company of the spidery green Rosa viridiflora and the yellow and orange awning-striped \u2018Oranges and Lemons.\u2019\u00a0 \u2018Distant Drums\u2019 is much more voluptuous and beautiful than the former and leagues ahead of the latter on the elegance scale.<\/p>\n

Words are inadequate to describe the color, but I will try.\u00a0 The buds are blushed with pink.\u00a0 When they are half open, you can see that the center petals are fawn-colored and the outer ones are shades of medium pink.\u00a0 In warmer weather, the fawn petals may have a peachy overtone\u2014or they may not.\u00a0 When the blooms begin to age and open fully, the colors change\u2014sometimes almost hourly.\u00a0 Ultimately the entire flower displays its final color\u2014a delicate pale mauve.\u00a0 The rose blossoms are also large, usually with more than twenty petals apiece and have, as the rose fanciers say, \u201cgreat substance.\u201d\u00a0 Borne singly rather than in clusters, they are wonderful for arrangements.<\/p>\n

To add to its already considerable charms, \u2018Distant Drums\u2019 is fragrant, with the characteristic myrrh or licorice scent that is evident in many of David Austin\u2019s roses.\u00a0 It is no coincidence that one of \u2018Distant Drum\u2019s parent roses was Austin\u2019s \u2018The Yeoman,\u2019 which is pink with orange\/apricot overtones and a myrrh fragrance.<\/p>\n

Pictures are almost as inadequate as words, since even the best photo reproduction does not usually do justice to the colors of the petals.\u00a0 I have not seen \u2018Distant Drums\u2019 in botanical gardens, though the Hershey public rose garden and the Denver Botanic Garden reportedly grow it.\u00a0 I would love to visit those gardens to see how differences in climate and soil affect the rose\u2019s distinctive colors.<\/p>\n

Griffith Buck\u20141915-1991–who bred \u2018Distant Drums\u2019 in Ames, Iowa, cultivated roses for beauty and extreme hardiness, but also experimented with unusual colors.\u00a0 His roses, \u2018Blue Skies\u2019 and \u2018Silver Shadows,\u2019 are gray to mauve\/blue and sometimes have pink-toned petal edges.\u00a0 All seem to age to a similar pale mauve. If I can find a few empty corners, I may install them in my garden as well.<\/p>\n

Unless the horticultural industry changes radically, you will probably never find \u2018Distant Drums\u2019 in a standard garden center or mass merchandiser.\u00a0 That is a real pity.\u00a0 Fortunately mail order can get you on the road to enjoying this wonderful rose in your home landscape.\u00a0 To obtain a plant, go to Rogue Valley Roses, (541) 535-1307, www.roguevalleyroses.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DISTANT DRUMS \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The Sound of Music, a wonderful Rogers and Hammerstein musical, has a song in the first act called \u201cHow Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?\u201d in which the Mother Abbess of an Austrian convent muses tunefully about how to deal with an errant postulant.\u00a0 As fans of the musical know, Maria, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3],"tags":[578],"class_list":["post-826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","tag-distant-drums-rose-griffith-buck-hardy-roses-shrub-roses-unusual-color-roses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=826"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":827,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/826\/revisions\/827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}