Coming up roses ...

When we lived in the south east, we promised ourselves we would grow roses for cut flowers.  We achieved this after a fashion with the wild rose that formed the wildlife arch, and the red rambling rose we disentangled when the council cut down the vegetation to replace our wire mesh allotment boundary fence.  But despite our good intentions we never grafted anything on to the stock we had.  Each year the wild rose flowered briefly and then its petals fell and gave place to rosehips for the birds.  The rambler needed sustained attention that we were not able to give.

We moved north and found that the rosy picture of our front garden was indeed true.  To the right of the porch there was a rose on a strong trellis.  No need to constuct one of those then from canes and odd bits of wire, no call for a budding knife and sticky tape.  My husband pronounced the rose healthy and pruned hard at the appropriate time.

Now our yellow rose is thriving.  New shoots are coming up from its base.  It appears to have no black spot or canker and is minimally afflected with greenfly, possibly because of the cool conditions here.  Sheltered by the house it is now blooming. 

We picked just a few roses for the house, ones that might have been damaged by the persistent wind and discovered their scent.  They are in a crystal vase that once belonged to my parents.  The fragrance fills our back room, our den. 

So many poets have responded to roses.  If you want to read one of the masters, find Shakespeare's Sonnet 23.  Meanwhile I shall watch our roses bud, bloom and fade all the summer long.