Rose Alert!
Rose alert! It's overcast, the garden is full of roses, so I want to glide around taking squillions of photographs. And of course I then want to race inside, look at my pictures, crop, and publish them all. Aargh! Oh, and write loads about how beautiful all the roses are this year. How the Allotment Garden is THE perfect place in which roses can thrive. How delicately non-golden is Golden Celebration, how happy Rhapsody in Blue, how sweet (and potentially scary) the old fashioned Rambling Rector. And then there's the recently identified Paul Transon, sturdy and sensible, covering the woodshed - an overwhelmingly beautiful bloke.
And so the day goes on - plod, gush, point and click. Plod, gush, point and click. Roses, roses, roses...
Oops. I notice that the Stumpy (AKA Willow Tree) Garden (where my new rugosas are just starting to flower) was oh so weedy. But here I am inside, writing my rosy ravings. This is hopeless. Wouldn't it be magical to be able to do everything at once? Either that, or completely stall time, and create the illusion. Hmm...
Roseamus gushiamus! Settle, settle, rosy petal. I need my gardening shorts, hat, sunscreen, and some sense of priority.
Ann Endt Rose
Mid-Afternoon...
Yes, I have taken more photographs, but have resisted the urge to peep at them. I'm about to deal to the remaining flowering annuals, etc., which are crying out behind the glass-house : Plant me! Plant me! I've cleared a lot of the Stumpy Garden weeds, so now there is room. And I'll be taking a bucket for instant watering. And the camera - just on case I spy something else rosy. Like the sparkling pink Gertrude Jekyll, or the crazy muddy-bloody red-black Fisherman's Friend. They're both David Austin roses, just in case you were a tad confused.
Then the end of the gardening day arrives, and I decide I have been half good (or half bad). I've done my final graceful wander around the garden, and the last roses of the day look amazing. I notice the pink rugosa Grootendoorst while watering behind the glass-house, so I have to take some photographs of it.
Unknown Ice Pink Rose
Another New Rose!
And then on the way back to the house I check in on the big single Complicata in the Wattle Woods, just starting to flower. Therein, another rose surprise - a fluffy icy pink, which I have never seen or photographed before. How very, very exciting. What on earth is it? It could have been lurking in there for years.
It's proving to be an exceptional year for the roses. They've been rain-watered well, and oddly (touch wood) are so far bug-free. House roses which I hardly pruned at all (like climbing Masquerade) are obviously enjoying my neglect. Silly things! Crepuscule is gorgeous, and so are the modest climbers Cornelia and Buff Beauty. Such beautiful colours. Such amazing flowers. I love all my roses - the subtle to the splendiferous, the elegant singles, the squashed up fluffies, the delicate tinies to the voluptuous fatties (Kronenbourg). The white roses - Flower Carpet, Iceberg, Prosperity - the dark brooders (Othello, Darcey Bussell) Oh joy! Rose alert!
Plod, gush, point and click...