Pink Things
I was going to do an Ask Robin tonight but I was waylaid by pink things. Mmmmm.
Remember I told you that Sunday mornings after service ring I go to the florist’s, and she’s fallen into the deliciously decadent habit of giving me things she’d throw out otherwise, because they’re too beat up or blown to sell? Some of them it’s perfectly true only last a day or so. But some of them I totally luck out on. For example. Speaking of (pink) peonies:
I wouldn’t dream of buying cut peonies; they cost a bomb. No, a bomb and a half. But she GAVE me these. And they’ve lasted all week.
[Okay. Now we enter into the surreal world of WordPress' ideas about relocating text and photos. Sigh. Brace yourselves.]
First two photos of Mme Pierre Oger, who is yet another favourite rose. She’s in the new big brick SUV-repelling planter in front of the house, which I should try to get a photo of the entirety of, but at present it’s busy being laced into a snug leafy wodge by the frelling sweet peas which are refusing to climb up their nice bamboo frame, guys, will you please pay ATTENTION. 
If you look closely, you can see some sweet peas ignoring their bamboo canes in the background.
I have a thing for pale-pink candy-striped roses. Mme Gregoire Staechlin, whom you have often seen before, is one end of the candy-stripe spectrum; Mme Pierre is the other. Peter Beales describes her as ‘of moderate vigour’ which is to say she’s a total frail weeping heroine type. Well, she’s a Bourbon, they’re almost all cranky, one way or another. But if you feed her like crazy and generally pet her and tell her how lovely she is, she may surprise you. And part of her charm is her willowness. The flowers themselves are almost round and the petals are nearly translucent: on the delicate plant that she usually is the whole show is ethereal. If elves grew roses, they would grow Mme Pierre.
And here she is again. 
[Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah--trying to fill up enough space that WordPress will leave text location alone--blah blah blah blah di blah blah blah di blah. Blah. Blah. Di blah blah.]
Okay, it’s probably not going to work. So anyway the next two photos, wherever they are, are of Ayrshire Splendens.
Who is, as you will immediately notice, another candy-striper. 
I’ve put the two together in the hopes that proximity will let you observe that while they’re both small, pale pink, roundish, and striped, they’re not all that similar after all. Mme Pierre is nearly globular; Ayrshire is more cupped. And Ayrshire is not only a rambler, although she is slim and wiry, she’s clearly a tough old thing, and not a fainting maiden; and her flowers don’t have that ethereal quality: the petals are thicker. She’ll also get to twenty foot; Mme Pierre tops out at five or six.
She also has an unusual scent. I do have a few almost-scentless roses; scent is very high on my list but it’s not a deal breaker. (The rose just to the right of Ayrshire is nearly scent-free, but I’ll post photos of her some day soon and you either will or won’t immediately see why I had to have her anyway.) But Ayrshire’s isn’t like anything else I know. It’s not at all a common rosy scent–as Mme Pierre’s is, for example.
And now, for something completely different:
Good, huh?
It’s years ago now that I first saw that Dualit, the world’s best toasters, had started making them in colours. Including PINK. At that point I already had a perfectly good original shiny stainless-steel Dualit. I had no excuse. There was a shop in Mauncester that sold coloured Dualits, including pink. I used to go stare at them occasionally.
And then thanks to MEnopause and other things beginning with ME I more or less gave up eating toast. [Insert wailing and rending of garments here.] So when Peter’s toaster broke, I gave him mine. I promise I had no ulterior motives. No, really. But that was last winter when the Aga was on, and if I decided to live dangerously and have a piece of toast, I had the Aga, which makes divine toast, it’s just slower, and sweeping the crumbs out is more of a nuisance.
But then summer came barrelling down upon us and I’ve broken with tradition and turned the Aga off . . . just in time for an assault of house guests. Most normal people like a nice piece of toast in the mornings.
I may forgive them for eating toast in front of me, for having provided the excuse to buy my pink toaster.
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