I snuck out of the office yesterday and wandered a bit around the Woodland Park Rose Garden in Seattle. I could have spent hours there. It’s huge, two and a half acres, 280 kinds of roses, all kinds of goodies like a gazebo for weddings, a reflecting pool with water lilies, the works. It’s so much fun to see big beds of ones I recognize. I’ll be sharing a few nice shots I took there, which is one of the best parts of blogging. On with the roses!

Try searching for “rose” or perhaps “tulip” while you’re here. And returning to the latest post is easy: click on Sara’s Fave Photos above. Visit Scenic Sunday for more interesting and beautiful sights around the world and Color Carnival for more great color.

I find these Double Delight roses irresistable. Their form, their magnificent coloration, their sweet and spicy scent just is perfection in a rose to me. I read that their unusual reddish edging, which is much darker in full sunshine and only a streaky (but still beautiful!) pink when the rose is blooming mostly in shade, was considered a flaw. How about that?

Visit Ruby Tuesday for more ruby redness of all kinds. If you browse around here, be sure to click on Sara’s Fave Photos when you want to get back to the latest post.

This yellow King’s Ransom beauty is fragrant, too.  Most of the roses in my new rosebed had to be pruned off due to the rain (they got all brown and ugly) but this one made it to perfection for us. But more are in bud, so if the weather dries out a bit we’ll have some more soon.

Visit Macro Monday and Mellow Yellow Monday after browsing around here. To return to the latest post, click on Sara’s Fave Photos above.

Not really blue, more blue violet, this anemone (a-NEH-moan-ee) is blooming WAY late, it seems to me, but I am happy to see it grace the early summer garden like this. Such a cutie.

Visit Macro Flowers Saturday and see more lovely blooms and SOOC to see more straight-out of-the-camera shots. If wandering around this site, try a new search term like Tulip or Begonia. Why not? Return to the full blog by clicking Sara’s Fave Photos above.

The peonies in my garden are finally in bloom and magnificent. These few in a vase were so long awaited and so much appreciated. They are an entry on the theme of “Soft” for Thursday Challenge and also pink for Pink Saturday.

Click on a couple of things if you have time but return to the latest post by clicking on Sara’s Fave Photos above.

Yet another rose from the rainy photo session the other day. This ‘Dolly Parton’ rose is one of my favorites, and the photo actually doesn’t do it justice. It’s the most scintillating shade of deep red-orange, wildly fragrant, and of course has that great name.

Visit Ruby Tuesday for more magnificent reds, and Color Carnival for more wild color.

You might try a new search term or tag like “red” or “pink” on this blog. Click on Sara’s Fave Photos to get back to the full blog after your wanderings.

Here’s another perfect rose, bathed in raindrops. This is the Peace rose, always a fave of me and so many others. I love its creamy yellow petals, edged with the palest, sweetest pink, and its healthy, bright green leaves. Like all my roses, it is fragrant. Why else have roses?

Visit Macro Monday and Mellow Yellow Monday for two great memes of close ups and cheerful yellow photos, and SOOC for more straight-out-of-the-camera shots.

You can search this blog for “rain,” perhaps, and find other roses with water droplets on them if you like. Or how about a tag like “reflections”? Click on Sara’s Fave Photos above to return to the full blog.

The rain has been wreaking havoc on the rose bushes, but a couple of dry-ish days allowed a few flowers to open to their potential magnificence—just to get rained on yet again. In the brief window of opportunity that a break in the wet allowed, I went outside and caught this beautiful apricot Sundowner rose, with such an appropriate name.

Visit Flowers for Today to see more blossoms around the planet, and Color Carnival for more brilliant color. SOOC has more straight-out-of-the-camera shots. But why not type in “rose” in the search field here and see what comes up? You can always return to the full blog by clicking on Sara’s Fave Photos above.

Finally the peonies in my backyard have bloomed! There are a couple of dozen out there, and I picked these. The smell of them in my office is heavenly.

Visit Pink Saturday and Macro Flowers Saturday after browsing around here. You can return to the full blog at Sara’s Fave Photos, above.

I took a walk in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle last week.

This old-fashioned rose with a single row of petals sometimes is prettier than the huge ruffled kind. Below that is ceanothus (see-an-OH-thus), or Wild Lilac in California, or California Lilac up here in Seattle. It also has a sweet scent and can become quite a big shrubby plant, covered in blue in the spring. When I lived in Northern California, it was common and wild, and bloomed with yellow broom on the rolling hills. Pretty nice!

Visit Macro Monday, Mellow Yellow Monday and Blue Monday after wandering about here.