The next chapter of an infinitely extendable series on other people’s roses

 

In this case, Peter’s.

Treasure Trove, doing her annual amazing thing.

That riot in the centre and left is all one rose, you know.  The bigger, more intensely coloured but rather overshadowed roses on the right are James Galway and William Morris.

Close up.

Some annual events are really eventful.  Treasure Trove in bloom is one of them.  Also, speaking of house-eaters.

A closer close up.

We actually see her better here than we did at the old house.  At the old house she was busy raging through the treetops, forty or fifty feet up.  She did drop a few stems downward so we could appreciate what we were missing, but mostly you had to stand under the original tree where her trunk, which was a clump of stems easily as big around as my thigh and of a toughness that would not have disgraced teak or ironwood, soared out of the mere earth, and look up.  She’s usually described as ‘thirty foot’.  Sure.  For the first year or two.   Peter was afraid she’d take over the universe with only a small end-of-mews cottage and garden shed to overwhelm but I was all PUT HER IN!  PUT HER IN!!!  I bought her–I’m the rose buyer in this family–and THRUST her upon him.  Well, it was his idea.  I was only abetting.

I say all this every year, right?  Eh.   Some stories are worth retelling.  If you’re not a rose person, what are you doing on this blog?  –Fantasy novels?  What?*

 

HAVE I MENTIONED LATELY HOW MUCH I HATE COMPUTERS? THIS PHOTO HAS TAKEN ABOUT HALF AN HOUR AND THE GOOD AUSPICES OF BLOGMOM TO LOAD.

It was taken with the same camera on the same memory card as all the others.  BUT NOOOOOOOOO.  THIS ONE IS POSSESSED BY DEMONS.  Okay, let’s see what fascinations await when I try to load the next one.  The screen will go black except for a fiery ring and a mysterious voice that is not coming from the speakers will intone:  One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them . . . Or it will be a photo of the B&B from someone’s holiday in Blackpool.  There will not be a neon campfire in the window.

James Galway. Doesn’t play the flute though.

 

William Morris.

I personally think Morris would be spinning in his grave if he knew that they named an orange ‘old fashioned’ rose after him.   I like orange in begonias, dahlias, gazanias, osteospermums, cardigans and topaz rings.  I find it varyingly problematical in roses.  And a rose bred to look old and ORANGE is like Queen Victoria in Jimmy Choos.  NOOOOOOOOO.**

But if you want an orange rose, this is my vote

This is Westerland.  You get a burning intense ORANGE bud . . .

And when she comes out you get orange-to-gold-to-peach.

She also smells fabulous, repeats well and is spectacularly tough.  I’m surprised she’s not more popular.  Relatively trouble-free roses are not thick on the ground (ha ha ha ha ha).  Maybe it’s something to do with the colour. . . . But I always loathed ‘Just Joey’ which for years kept being voted ‘Britain’s favourite rose’.  Whyyyyyyy?  The flowers are stupidly big–too big–and floppy and shapeless, and a creepy orangey-bilious-jaundiced-Caucasian-flesh colour on a revoltingly feeble bush that keeps falling over every time it produces one of its unpleasant blooms.  UGGGH.  Sue me, I’m American.

Now isn’t this a face you could love? Well, I can.

Love love love.

Oh, and Rachel is good too.

Although she is the pink end of orange.***  I’m going to make my usual caveat about colour varying with that year’s weather and what you’ve been feeding her and where you and she live.  Westerland can be a lot more in your face OOOOOORANGE, and Rachel can be more orange than pink.

I’ll post photos of my (orange) Ghislaine de Feligonde as soon as she’s out a little more. . . .

* * *

* There’s a joke here somewhere about retelling fairy tales, but I haven’t got it quite worked out.

** I should explain that Galway and Morris are artefacts of Peter’s predecessor.   Even if you like orange old-fashioned roses, the strong pink Galway is a perverse pairing.  Maybe the photos looked different in the catalogue.  As they so often do.

*** Did someone say PINK?