Roses...
Honorine de Brabant
The dogs and I are always going around the garden - with several cameras - to check on the roses. There are so many to photograph, I could fill twenty pages with their pictures. And then some.
Just say 'Wow!'?
I don't find it easy writing about the roses. Thoughtful words and descriptive phrases (well, mine, at least) never do them justice. Might just be best to say 'wow!' and leave it at that! Not sure that my old camera quite does the business, though, so I have been experimenting - my phone, Non-Gardening Partner's camera (shush, don't tell).
Thanks to a wetter than usual spring, the orchard climbers which are usually left to 'sink or swim' are very happy. Madame Caroline Testout is actually looking healthy (for once). And the cherry rambler Chevy Chase is sprawling happily all over the ground. Is it at all interested in covering its archway? No way! Freedom for rambling roses!
Chevy Chase Rambling along the Ground
I love the big roses in the house gardens - Crepuscule, of course, and the woodshed rambler which is - oops - a mixture of Paul Transon, Alberic Barbier (I think) and a vibrant later flowering pink (possibly American Pillar). Poor woodshed? Hopefully it's sturdier that the old plum tree which Banksia Lutea took a liking to, and eventually brought down in a tangle of cracked branches. As an aside, I seem to have been rather random with Alberic Barbier, back in the day. I keep finding versions of him scattered around the garden - up the plum in the Pond paddock, along a fence in the Driveway. And the oddest thing it that I have no recollection of buying any of him. At all.
Back in that day (again) I had a thing about using host trees in which to grow roses. What I didn't do was think it through carefully, check the dimensions, and ask the tree for permission. But sometimes it works! Moonlight (a white hybrid musk) scrambles through an old apple tree, no problems. Another apple tree hosts a modest climber (said to be Lavender Lassie) - she thankfully wraps herself around quite gently. Some roses have been poorly matched with their supports - like Souvenir de Madame Leonie de Viennot, who was supposed to horizontally adorn a sheep fence. Naturally she prefers the vertical trees and shrubs nearby. Oh well. Many such roses are forgiving, and when they just get too pushy they can be chopped down. If you've ever done that to a Banksia lutea you'll know that nothing is actually lost. Oh no. They re-sprout, and after a couple of years are as tenacious as ever.
Cornelia Roses - Old and New!
So here's the camera verdict so far. I like the summer greens of NGP's camera, and it's not shy of the bright sunny days. But it's rather heavy, and I haven't worked out how to do close-ups.
He has given me retrospective permission to use it, and so far I haven't dropped the camera in the pond (action dog photography while throwing sticks into the pond requires three or four hands - this is possibly called a tripod). Or left it on a garden bench to be irrigated overnight. Nor has the lens cap fallen off in the bushes. Yet. Oops.