How many times can I say this before you get bored? Well I cannot help it. The weather is glorious and perfect, and there hasn't even been a threat of light frost, and my roses -- newly planted no less -- are still putting out the occasional bloom, and it is all very lovely.
(Scepter'd Isle rose)
(Sunrise, from one corner of Steffi's House -- with rose bed at the side -- to the other, during morning walk with Millie)
Breakfast bathed in sunshine.
I have noble goals for this day and I do get to some of them. Millie spends a half day at doggie daycare and that helps me accomplish a number of outside tasks. Like, for example, planting an onion right in the back of the rose bed.. Well, it's really a spring blooming allium. Same thing. The goal here is to put some companion plants into the rose bed. Not densely, but in a few spaces, and an allium not only has compatible blooms, it also has a fragrance. A distinct onion smell.
Planting it seems at cross purposes with what I have tried to do -- to create a very fragrant rose garden. But I'm hoping that the onion, stuck toward the rear, wont affect our nostrils, while at the same time that it scares away the aphids and insects that love roses but detest the smell of onion. One of those organic solutions that may or may not yield results, but at worst, I'll have pretty pink allium blooms poking out in between my Teasing Ginger and Parfuma Bliss roses.
I do also plant roses today. Two of them -- the noble Francis Meilland and the lovely Boscobel. If you are a rosarian, you will have heard of Francis Meilland, after whom my Meilland rose was named. Here's a fun fact: I'm sure my father, who was not a gardener let alone a rosarian, heard of Francis Meilland. Let me tell you why.
Meilland was a French horticulturalist and rose breeder. In the late 1930s, he developed a beautiful new rose -- yellow, with a touch of red at the edges. Disease resistant. Sending repeat blooms. But the Germans were about to invade and Meilland was concerned about the survival of his newest cultivar. So he sent cuttings to various rosarians around the world and importantly, one cutting left France on the last flight before the invasion and that one went to the United States. It was safely received and propagated in Pennsylvania. Different countries gave the rose different names. The US, along with Norway and Sweden, called it the Peace Rose and eventually it became recognized as that, officially given the name in April of 1945, on the day that Berlin fell. And later that year, Peace roses were given to each of the delegations at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations in San Francisco. My very young then father was part of the Polish delegation that went to San Francisco in 1945.
In case you're wondering, I did also plant a Peace rose in my garden. May it bloom.
In the afternoon, Ed stops by. He came to help with the carrying of some heavy boxes to the basement, but he stays for a while, just because. Here's my chance! I have a wheelbarrow full of rocks and hard clay soil (today's diggings). I look up at him with puppy eyes and get him to do the odious task of pushing and dumping that wheelbarrow up the hill to where I usually unload extra soil and sod. Ed does tell me that I'd have an easier time of it if I didn't have a flat on my wheelbarrow. Who knew...
And then I continue my work outside until it is time to pick up Millie.
So, a grand day with rosy overtones. Again.
with so much love...
