Rose Stories

Bang on time the roses flowered.  Not my favourite plant as I don't like the suburban formality of rose gardens; they seem sterile and cold and over-planned.  But we inherited two huge bushes with the house, and they both flowered in the first week of June.  One is big and blowsy and pink and ruffled; like a can-can dancer's knickers.  It has mottled leaves and blackfly. The other one is enormous and has hedgerow-rose flowers, small and simple and plain white.  It has no blackfly and healthy leaves.  This is the one we will keep.  From the kitchen window tonight I saw the gnats dance in the sunlight, the evening light over the Radnor Forest, through the leaves. We have also inherited a smaller suburban rose in the garden and a couple of pink-white hedge roses in the boundary hedges.  And this afternoon a gardening friend brought us a small cut rose; they found the plant in their garden, white flowers ageing to pink, slightly ruffled but small, tight, simple.  They had a rose expert in to identify it and he could not; this is how plants die out and are rediscovered, ancient varieties found by gardeners in overgrown gardens, massively visible for June and then invisible for the rest of the year.  

And this evening we planted up twelve strawberry plants, a gift from Devon friends up here house-hunting; good friends I am fortunate to have known for twenty years, suddenly!