ROSES, con’t ll
Photo of intense wall. This is mainly Mme Greg, but you can see Mme Alfred peeking out here and there. What amuses me is the drainpipe. I don’t know what everybody else’s gardening catalogues are trying to sell them–and as you have seen in previous posts I am not unduly resistant to the idea of nailing more plant opportunities to my house walls–but something that has got very fashionable here lately is Drainpipe Planters to Hide Those Ugly Drainpipes. I’d be happy to put up a drainpipe planter if I thought I could wedge it in.
I have not been lucky this year in my sunlight. But this gives you an idea of scale. That whited-out window in the upper left of the photo is my office. I look out on a tangle of Mme Alfred and Mme Gregoire. (I look out through a tangle of geraniums, begonias and Christmas cacti on the interior window sill, but that’s another story.) The sitting room window below will have been pinked out by May Queen in another year.
The view, more or less, from my study. The window is a frelling modern double-glazed ugly horrible plastic thing on sliders with FAKED small panes (put in by my PREDECESSOR, I am NOT RESPONSIBLE) and for a photo you have to stick your arm out and click blindly. Arrrrgh.
But sitting at my desk I don’t notice the window.
Sombreuil. A wildly underappreciated rose. Easy, reliable, a good doer. Why isn’t she famous? (Why aren’t I famous? Not because I am easy or reliable. . . . )
She smells good too. One of the things about a small garden is that it forces you to decide what is IMPORTANT. Like that your roses have a nice strong smell. Of course there are kind of a lot of roses that have a nice strong smell. . . .
And to finish this first instalment of rose mania 2010, here is Queenie (Konigin van Danemark) just starting to come out.
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