It's all coming up roses

Yes, I’m doing another garden/flower post, My mother has always loved gardening and everything she touches flourishes. She has created several gardens from scratch in the various homes we lived in as children but somehow it never rubbed off on me.  As an adult I hated it. I had no time for it, disliked it intensely and spent as little time as possible gardening. I think it might have been because my gardens were so large back in South Africa, it was always extremely hot, far too hot to be digging in the intense heat when there was a glistening pool to cool off in…gardening just wasn’t my thing back then.  I had a gardener in those days but I would just instruct him where to plant what and let him get on with it. I loved my lavender and my white iceberg roses, other than that I couldn’t give a toffee what was happening elsewhere in the garden. 

Then I met a lady, a very special person called Irene. Irene is a gardener. Her hands are testimony to the years spent toiling the earth. Without gloves. She has strong expressive hands. Hands not afraid to get down and dirty with the soil. Soon we started talking about gardening…not my subject at all. Didn’t have a clue, still don’t. But then one year on my birthday, she visited with the express purpose of teaching me to garden, how to plant seeds etc. From that day on her love and joy of planting seeds seemed to have miraculously rubbed off on me. I call it an impartation of her gift for gardening.  It was that simple. And that’s how I learned to love gardening, sowing seeds and being one with the soil. I still don’t have a clue, but I’m a little less clueless than I was before and I really, really love gardening. I get it now, totally.

I’ve been harvesting my own seeds for about three years now, that in itself seems to be a miracle. Tiny seeds collected by hand, stuffed into envelopes and pulled out the following year, plonked in damp soil and within a few weeks they start to sprout! I am utterly in awe of the life cycle of plants and the simple joy it is giving me. I love the ritual of pulling out all my seeds and sowing them in seed trays ever hopeful that they will grow into something beautiful. Quite often I just throw the whole packet in the tray, rake through with my fingers and hope for the best. Nature wins almost every time.

I find the simple act of weeding extremely soothing on a deep psychological level and feel it even more in my aching bones when I try and get up again!  I love feeling the earth beneath my fingers, seeing the little worms wriggle free as I uproot an intruder and carefully place the worm out of harm’s way. So forgive me for carrying on a bit about my little square of a garden. Because it’s all still a bit of a novelty.

On our visit to Petersham Nurseries a few weeks back I added David Austin’s Gentle Hermione to my collection. I now have three David Austin Roses. I loved the sound of the name and the bush was heavy with about 30 roses all in bloom and plenty of buds waiting to flower. A beautiful soft pale pink -  I just couldn’t resist! I have been picking them constantly over the last few days. Of course the rain we’ve had lately has caused several roses to droop and so I have picked them instead of leaving them to get damaged or break off.. Enough talking, the roses.... the first few photos are the Gentle Hermione, the slightly darker pink are the Sceptred Isle, the deep frilly pink ones are James Galway, all David Austin Roses and then my white iceberg which I've always loved.

So an overdose of roses...

There is nothing like a beautiful scented rose to make one smile!

Have a lovely week.

Sharon