May 11th, 2016
The letter R for Roses
Life is not a bowl of cherries, - it has been a garden full of roses for me
during the last seventy years
(Thursday would have been our 71st Anniversary and the start of my romance with roses.
Charles sailed into New York harbour on the 1st of May 1945, with bands playing
to welcome those aboard home from overseas. We were married on the 12th of May.
And it was Mother's Day week-end and wartime, - no flowers to be had.
My boss, the City Architect, knew people who knew other people,
and we had a full array of beautiful roses).
during the last seventy years
(Thursday would have been our 71st Anniversary and the start of my romance with roses.
Charles sailed into New York harbour on the 1st of May 1945, with bands playing
to welcome those aboard home from overseas. We were married on the 12th of May.
And it was Mother's Day week-end and wartime, - no flowers to be had.
My boss, the City Architect, knew people who knew other people,
and we had a full array of beautiful roses).
In those early years when we moved to the Cawston Bench, planted an orchard out on the sage brush and Charles built a house we planted Blaze roses outside our bedroom window. Those were the roses dear to his childhood that bloomed along the back verandah on the 'old place' where he grew up, - the ones he used to pluck to put in his lapel on date nights, when he was young.
Our youngest daughter with me, before church one Sunday in the Sixties,
and the Blaze roses.....
When we left the farm and moved to 10th Avenue we went a little garden crazy....
wherever there was a fence there were roses and the Blaze still climbed
the wall below our bedrooom window!
the wall below our bedrooom window!
Charles sent away for thirty different varieties and planted them along the dividing fence, where they
bloomed heartily and kept us busy keeping the grass from around the roots.
What a lovely twenty years we spent there....but then we moved to the Hillside
and were faced with the delightful challenge of a new garden to be
created from naught....
First of all - the roses. It is where I discovered the Abraham Darby
and the Prairie Princess, and the Mister Lincoln
Here in town the lovely cabbage roses at the garden gate are just starting
to bloom, accompanied by the purple clemantis...
but out in the back garden, climbing over the garden shed, the Blaze
still holds place of prominence in my heart and
in my memory.
For more interesting Rs click here to visit with Roger and Denise
at ABC Wednesday - and all their Robust helpers.
