Rose Contemplation in January
It’s been temperate enough that I’ve got out into the garden two whole afternoons in a row: Low to mid Fahrenheit 40s and crucially no wind. Sunlight would be nice but we can’t have everything.
For all my rose mania and general plant greed I am a pathetically fair-weather gardener. I get cold really easily.* But even in this weather I can’t keep my gloves on: I’ll notice that my hands seem to be going numb again and realise that I’m not wearing my gloves. Again. And since I have no recollection of taking them off I have no recollection of where I may have left them. . . . I tried harder to be out in all weathers at the old house–I had to: over 500 rose bushes is over 500 rose bushes, and no, I still didn’t anything like keep up–but I’ve turned into an utter craven wimp here.**
My days of voluntary wimphood may be numbered however. B_twin_1, drat her, found me this link: http://www.abc.net.au/gardening/stories/s2163640.htm about some insane Australian who has over 200 roses in her back yard. Okay, so ‘average suburban garden’ is probably bigger in Australia. But sitting here counting rosebushes in my head I realize I’ve got thirty, that’s thirty . . . oh, gods, I’ve forgotten the ones out front . . . okay, over thirty . . . oh, no, glory, I forgot . . . no, wait . . . uh . . . I’ve got over forty roses here at the cottage. Where the garden is so small that when hellhounds and I are all out there together not all of us can put all of our feet down at once. Possibly because there are over forty roses in the way . . . wait a minute . . . no, I’ve just counted again . . . I think it’s nearer fifty. Fifty isn’t possible! Fifty isn’t possible! Not in this garden! And this isn’t even counting the Rose Hedge or the four bare-root ones that I did manage to get heeled in before winter happened . . . or, of course, the ten I ordered the other day, but some of these will go to Third House.
And I haven’t even properly begun at Third House. I mean, yes, of course, I’ve planted a few roses: of course: am I breathing? But I haven’t Planned or Taken the Long View. Third House’s previous occupant liked roses, but her taste was fairly standard, not to say boring–and she had the appalling habit of now and then popping in an extra of the same rose. Doesn’t she realize that time and space are limited and there are thousands of different roses out there???? I like Zephirine Drouhin and Albertine but I don’t want two of either of them. Climbing Iceberg, a fantastically over-hyped rose, looks like she’s going to snuff it and take herself off my hands, but the giraffe-necked pink things leaning over my beautiful new fence in front must be the dreaded Queen Elizabeth: ubiquitous and unkillable. I am privately convinced that a lot of the rose’s bad rep as an ugly plant is down to Queen Elizabeth. She’s tough as old boots and a reliable flowerer, so people keep whacking her in everywhere. But she is an ugly bush–spectacularly so: every sneer every not-a-rose-person has ever sneered about tall gawky angular plants without enough foliage, apply to the Queen E with enough space left over to . . . dock the QEII. Her flowers aren’t even much. Okay, they’re pink, I’m required to like them, but that’s all they are. They create no particular shape, they’re just a kind of blob on the end of the stem, and they barely even smell. I wouldn’t have a QE rosebush . . . which is no doubt how I’ve ended up with four.
Although speaking of rants, rose trouble, and b_twin_1, the last named also sent me this link about Tipsy Imperial Concubine: http://www.rereviewed.com/thedeepnorth/?p=159 And then added insult to injury by including this one as well: http://www.rereviewed.com/thedeepnorth/?p=786 The blog author is an author, Jane Stevenson***, who lives near Aberdeen, ie here in the UK, which explains why she’s interested in the Peter Beales’ rose sale that was my downfall recently–and I want to know how she manages to grow Tipsy in Aberdeen. She doesn’t merely have a conservatory, she has a conservatory with triple glazing and under-floor heating and a punkah wallah to ensure the subtly warmed air circulates properly. . . . I would say that quite a few of the Teas and Chinas tend to long graceful stems, relatively few prettily-shaped leaves and then quite amazing flowers . . . but I haven’t grown Tipsy before so she may prove a revelation. I’ll let you know. Oh, and my Archiduc Joseph really was pink-deep-pink-gold-scarlet-salmon. Nostalgia. Okay, next year, when the building work is done and I’ve started taking Long Views.
And last . . . here is, perhaps, a demonstration of true rose mania. I know which rose she’s talking about when she says that the worst that Peter Beales has ever managed to bring himself to say of a rose is ‘a strange rose, whose addiction to mildew and other diseases renders it no more than a novelty’: Roger Lambelin. I used to grow her. I think he’s being a little harsh. Yes, she’s cranky, but I wouldn’t single her out as the worst–especially not among the little bundles of nerves and neuroses that many of Beales’ catalogue’s obscurities are.
Meanwhile we had another hard frost last night. I’m–reluctantly–getting good at this: the local weather had not told us we had a below-freezing night coming yesterday, but when hellhounds and I left the cottage to go back to the mews for supper, I Sniffed the Air like a hellhound suspecting the presence of rabbit, and said, that’s frost on its way. And bundled hellhounds in the car so I could re-swathe the geranium.† And it didn’t get above freezing again today till past ten am.
The other notable excitement of the day is that Atlas has finished and set up The Table. Months ago now when I was first resentfully hauling in dozens of plants every night and distributing them about the kitchen floor, Of Which There Is Not Much, I thought that life would be much simpler if some kind of table arrangement could be made over and around the hellhounds’ crate so I could put heavy things on it. Like plants in pots. Then of course this frost thing got out of hand and now I have a grow light, a jungle, and no sitting-room. But I’d already set Atlas onto the creation of a crate-table. So now I have a crate-table too. Yowzah. I now very nearly don’t have a kitchen either. And only Very Thin People can ever visit me here, at least if they’re expecting to be able to get past the kitchen table . . . to, like, the stairs, at the top of which is the loo. Anyone not suffering advanced emaciation is hereby warned not to stay long. The new table is a surprisingly handsome object, however, and . . . next winter it can hold some plants. A few. Since by next winter I’ll have the summerhouse insulated and the grow light rehung there, and everything–almost everything, I don’t want to waste this lovely weight-bearing piece of furniture–will be up at Third House. Tipsy may stay here. And the nectarine and peach trees. Which had better not grow much or they won’t clear the ceiling.
* * *
* Except, of course, when I get too hot. I frequently don’t like July either.
** Peter, at eighty-one, is finally beginning not to be particularly enthralled at the prospect of gardening in hail, sleet, flood, pestilence and so on. He was out there every day at the old house, and would come in all smiling and invigorated on icy winter days to find me clinging to three whippets and the fireplace. I don’t think I ever threw one of his own wellies at him, but I certainly considered it.^
^ And speaking of Peter, he had this to say about my difficult Damarian translation decisions yesterday: ‘In the Damarian antipodes (maybe), the locals ride knagafoos, commonly known as foos. They move at various paces, the foogallop, the foocanter, and, of courser, the footrot. So you may need it one day.’
I had actually taken note of the foo trot myself, but had somehow failed to carry it to its logical conclusion.
*** One of whose books I have just ordered, with six others of various provenance which I’d been (variously) thinking about. . . . Well, I couldn’t not look her up when it turns out she’s a writer, could I? And one thing leads to another . . .
† with its companion rose. One of fifty. Or so.
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