Jasmine & Lady Banks Rose

Ken and I bought two pink jasmine plants last weekend.  We planted one on a trellis just outside our bedroom window – dee-vine wafts!  We put the other one off the dining room deck to vine up the pole that supports the new decorative lighting strings we installed a few weeks ago.  We also bought a bunch of young Lady Banks climbing roses (and Carolina Jessamin and fuchsia bougainvillea) for the fence along the east courtyard. See above photo.

Pink Jasmine or Winter Jasmine (Jasminum polyanthum)

I took these first two photos yesterday on the Sam Hughes Home Tour. The Sam Hughes Neighborhood is the next neighborhood over from ours to the southeast. It is chock full of way cool historic Tucson architectural gems and delicious landscaping.

The photo above shows a mature pink jasmine vine.  The one below, a mature Lady Banks rose or Tombstone Rose, so named because it loves the desert heat. Curiously enough, the largest rose in the world is a Lady Banks Rose located south of Tucson in Tombstone, Arizona, of all places.

 Lady Banks Rose or Tombstone Rose (Rosa banksiae)

It was fun to catch these photos and bring them home to Ken -- who was busy recovering from two days of re-doing our ENTIRE irrigation system by watching the NCAA coverage.  It gave us a glimpse of how our baby plants will look (and smell!) in a few years.  Ahhhhh….

Here’s one of my favorite Sam Hughes homes on the tour, for your viewing pleasure!

Here’s a close-up -- don’t you love this sweet awning with the decorative wrought iron rods?
Entry courtyard

One of the two back courtyards. Actual lawns are a real rarity in Tucson -- that’s “Syn-Lawn” in this courtyard!

Looking through to the pool courtyard.

Pool courtyard. A little Lawrence of Arabia, anyone?