Bed Of Roses

My lovely son, the Professional Gardener, brought me home an armful of roses that he had taken from the last of the summer's display, and I've been enjoying them in a jug on the kitchen table for several days. You simply can't beat garden roses - nothing you get in a florist will ever approach the naturalness and sweet scent of garden roses. And they are all the more enjoyed now, being the last armfuls we are likely to get, - many roses continue with sporadic flowerings during the early winter, but this is the last month for really generous bunches.

As I was drinking my coffee this morning a clump of petals fell off onto the table with a soft thud, and it struck me how they are still lovely, even after they have fallen, and in fact it put me in mind of a line from Shelley "Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heap'd for the beloved's bed".

Let's hope old Percy was thinking rose petals, not "leaves" in the sense that we know them, as the leathery and rather prickly leaves of the rose would make a considerably less attractive proposition as a bed. I expect it's poetic licence or something, what do I know. What I do know though, whilst we're on the romantic theme,  is that you can make your own wedding confetti from dried rose petals very easily. I did it for my own wedding quite successfully. Just gather the petals as they fall and put them in a single layer in a warm place to dry for a few days, if it's a shotgun wedding and you're in a hurry you can dry them on a paper towel in the microwave, but be careful not to overcook and brown them. And if you're not thinking of getting married, they make good pot pourri too.

The Shelley poem I mentioned is a well known favourite about the impermanence of physical things and yet how such things live on in the memory. Funnily enough I know it more as a song than a poem as I used to sing a setting of it in the school choir. Here's the full text

Music, when soft voices die,

Vibrates in the memory,

Odours, when sweet violets sicken,

Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,

Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;

And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,

Love itself shall slumber on.

Percy Byshhe Shelley

The Clergyman At The Back Door

Thought I would just show you a picture or two of the vigorous white rose  Rambling Rector who lives by the back door. I took this picture last week, when it was at its peak, it's just gone over now - there's no second show, it's all at one mad flurry, but quite lovely for a week or two in June.

Not only is it visually stunning, the perfume is lovely too, and has filled the kitchen whilst I've had the doors and windows open in the hot weather.

It's fairly generally available, but don't be tempted to plant this rose on a small pillar or arch.It is vigorous and needs plenty of room to spread and is ideal for planting at the base of an old apple tree. There's another one in the village growing on a dead almond tree which also works well. If you plant it by the back door like me, you do have the side effect of a confetti filled kitchen for a few days when the petals start to fall though. Small price to pay I feel.

What I Did On My Holidays

The first day back from the school holidays when I was a child in primary school, was taken up mostly by writing a "composition", about What I Did In The Holidays.  And I could never think what to write, all the long summer days had paled into Autumn and Back to School, -  maybe it's just that children are best at "now" as opposed to "last week" or in my case even "ten minutes ago"!

Anyway, I've improved a bit now and can report that I've just come back from a trip to France and one of the lovely places we visited was Monet's famous garden at Giverny, not far from Paris. I was really looking forward to visiting this famous garden, and I thought you might like to see a few of the pictures I took.

But first here's Monet himself in his later years in his garden probably around 1920.

Bit of a dapper old chap I think, he was fond of the good things in life, and like to dress, and live well.

 And here's my picture of Monet's Garden now, a little too much ironmongery on show here, and not enough rose I think.

And as I walked around the garden I felt that there was a greater concern with keeping up a colourful display for the visitors, than in maintaining the garden in the way in which Monet might have known it.  Call me an old fuddy duddy (go on, I dare you) and maybe I've just been to too many National Trust "restored" gardens, and whilst I'm indeed no Monet expert, I don't think the old boy would have recognized some parts of his garden.

Would he for example, have had bedding displays of Impatiens, busy lizzies, like this

 or, (look away now, James) bedding geraniums (pelargoniums) worthy of any local authority roundabout display. I may be wrong, but I think probably not.

And whilst some of the climbing roses were absolutely lovely, there seemed too many modern floribunda varieties, (which I noticed are very popular in many french gardens) such as this bed of Centenary of Lourdes standards.

So loads of flowers, bright colours, and this may well be what Monet would have had were he still here, he certainly went to the french rose society's annual trials to find out what the latest thing was, and among his favourite "new" roses was the vigorous shocking pink rambler "American Pillar". So he certainly loved colour.

Anyway, the second half of the garden is the famous lake with the water lilies, which also  feature in Monet's  paintings. This part of the garden is wonderfully restful, and a delight, as you can see from even my amateur photography skills.

Here's Monet's Water Lilies

and Monet's Boat...

So, all in all, though I have some reservations on the planting, this is a wonderful garden, with plenty to see. It's always going to be busy though, so don't expect to have the place to yourself.

And finally I was pleased to note that Monet was apparently a poultry keeper, so here's..

Monet's chicken.

A Light Sussex if I'm not mistaken..

The last rose of summer

It was just going dark when I took this picture of a single remaining flower of Louise Odier, a lovely old bourbon rose, which flowers properly in midsummer, but I deadheaded it after it finished flowering, and she rewarded me with a few late blooms, and this is the last. There are still flowers on the ground cover roses that I grow under the trees, but I don't really count those, they are roses, but this is proper.

There are still quite a few sunflowers - I always grow Velvet Queen, which is still my favourite, but this one I tried for the first time this year, and it's a lovely dark chocolate colour.  It's called Black Magic, - it's an F1 hybrid though so you can't save the seed for next year.

I've been saving quite a bit of seed lately, it's well worth doing with the price of some flower seeds. Easy things like sunflowers, calendulas, poppies, nigellas, french marigolds, cosmeas, verbena bonariensis, and lots of others - you get so many seeds from just a few plants, you'll have enough to give away as presents to other gardeners. And there's good evidence to show that  when you save your own seed, the process of natural selection encourages the best varieties for your own particular soil and climate to be developed.  Just collect ripe seedheads, and store them in paper envelopes, in a cool dry place. After a few weeks when the drying process is complete, you can remove the seed pods and other chaff, and put the seeds away ready for next year. And a little collection of home saved seeds in decorated packets would be a welcome and meaningful gift for any gardener.( I didn't say anything about Christmas did I?)