First Roses
I overslept by an hour and a half.
I feel like death on downers.
I decided, since I felt like mouldy hay anyway and had no good mood nor PEGASUS-producing energy to ruin, I’d make a lot of overdue phone calls. Like to the dentist. I try to avoid the dentist* when the ME is on the ascendant, because you can be run over by a bulldozer too many times. But this particular bout of ME has been going on for months and I can’t avoid the dentist forever.
They had a cancellation this afternoon! So I went to the dentist today!
Can it get any worse!
Yes!
I went round to Third House and the bathroom is a disaster. And they haven’t even started painting.
So let’s have some roses. I need cheering up.
The very first rose out this year was the wrong one. It should be Agnes or Mme Gregoire Staechelin–and I have been really looking forward to Agnes, she was new last year and didn’t flower–or possibly Old Blush, but Fru Dagmar Hastrup beat them all. Fru Dagmar is a terrific rose–starts early, stays late, keeps flowering even if you don’t deadhead her, and produces fabulous red hips and the foliage turns gold in autumn. And puts up with almost anything. She’ll grow in a pot, she’ll grow in the ground, she’ll grow in bad ground, she’ll grow in sun, she’ll grow in shade. She’s a rugosa, so she will also rip you to shreds if you approach her unwarily, but she’s worth it. Oh, and she smells good. She’ll also survive Midwestern winters. A friend wanted to plant a rose on her grandparents’ grave out in the middle of the prairie–and she rarely got out there herself because she lives at the other end of the state, so the poor rose wasn’t going to have any tending, even the first year when even a tough-as-old-boots rose usually needs help, like being watered regularly. That was five years ago and I believe Fru is beginning to take over the graveyard.
Frell. Frell frellfrellfrellfrellfrellfrellfrell. FRELL. Next is Old Blush, but WordPress the delicate, tremulous, and easily overwhelmed, wants the file smaller and Microsoft Sodding Picture (*&^%$£”!!!! Editor isn’t functioning this evening for some reason. I am so not having a good day.
All right. So. This is Mme Alfred Carriere, another terrific rose***. She and Mme Gregoire (Staechelin) grow up the same wall–the wall that is my undetached neighbour’s house wall, so it’s three storeys high: a wall just crying out for a rose or two–and this year, Mme Alfred’s fourth, she’s finally really getting going. Last two years Mme Gregoire has had it all her way: this year, at the moment, Mme Alfred is rioting out and Mme Gregoire is saying, huh? Is it that time already?
Mme Alfred, looking for the fourth storey. She’s been growing when I wasn’t looking: last year Mme Gregoire was clearly bigger and taller. I am remembering now, speaking of taking over graveyards, that my Mme Alfred at the old house was trying to take over the vegetable garden.
Dreaming Spires. English readers and soppy Anglophiles like myself will know that this refers to the city of Oxford. I’ve just had a quick troll through Google for why she was named after the city of Oxford, but other than that the breeder lived near there I can’t find anything useful. A lot of rose names are silly (‘Sexy Rexy’) but this one seems to me sillier than many.
She’s getting a bit rare; all named roses being grafts or clones of the original, do tend to wear out eventually. She may be coming to the end of her vitality. But I seem to have got a good one; she’s not in a very salubrious spot, but she’s growing up into the apple tree and finding sufficient sunlight and generally thriving. And I feed her like mad.
Agnes at last. Another rugosa, which means working around her is like putting your hands in a shark’s mouth. † She also has a funny way of growing: six or seven prickly feet straight up and then a cluster of flowers at the tip. I have her tied down over the daphne odora, horizontality being an old gardener’s trick to make a rose send up short vertical shoots with roses on them. She’s also tough and healthy and smells divine.
And Fantin Latour, another rose that regularly gets on the ‘most beautiful’ list. I wouldn’t want to have to choose, myself, but Fantin is superb. She’s also kind of huge. I’ve at least got Souvenir pinned to a wall: Fantin is in the little narrow bed at the edge of the little wall that separates the patio area from the back wall. As I fight my way past her, I tell myself, well, she’s not as big as Souvenir. . . .
* * *
* I try to avoid the dentist, full stop
** Although it’s an idea.
*** No, not all my roses are terrific. Some of them are terrific pains in the backside. But I am perverse and foolish.
† A very small shark. A fairly mellow small shark. Still . . . toothy.
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