“You live a normal life and it’s quite difficult to realise that this normal life is coming to an end.”
–Â Man in Ukraine, BBC interview, 24th February 2022
From Bud to Bloom to Hip: How a Wild Rose Sets Seed
Continue reading “From Bud to Bloom to Hip: How a Wild Rose Sets Seed”
Rose Bedeguar Gall (Robin’s Pin Cushion)
Some rose diseases are so easily spread and devastating that I have a horror of them (rose rosette disease or crown gall of roses, for example). On seeing these mossy galls, despite the overactive alarm message, ‘Do not touch!’ flashing at the forefront of my mind, I did get close enough to take pictures. I vaguely remembered what these fuzzy growths were but needed to look them up to be sure.
I need not have been so alarmed: Rose bedeguar gall, known as Robin’s pin cushion or mossy rose gall, is neither a disease nor as harmful to the rose as might appear. Continue reading “Rose Bedeguar Gall (Robin’s Pin Cushion)”
Ruffled Apricot Rose
Great Companion Plants for a Cottage Garden: Roses
Companion plants will bring out the best characteristics of roses – especially shrub roses – and help to make up for any weaknesses. While they’ll mingle around, above or below the roses, they should not compete too aggressively for food, water or space. Continue reading “Great Companion Plants for a Cottage Garden: Roses”
Gallery of White Roses
“There is something quite special about white roses… they are all purity and light.” – David Austin
I’m sharing pictures of white shrub roses and rambling roses in eager anticipation of the peak flowering season for roses which is a couple of weeks or so away in my part of the world. As my sweetheart would say, bring it on! Meanwhile, I’ll let the roses do their own talking.
Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, Texas, and Memories of Roses
A free-to-visit garden is not to be sniffed at – but then again, some of them are. Few visitors to a rose garden can resist leaning in to inhale the fragrance. We seem hard-wired to think ‘scent’ the moment after we think ‘rose’.
Shakespeare’s ‘A rose by any other name would smell as sweet’ can’t take all the credit. Scent associations trap memories like flies in amber in a lifetime’s layering of impressions. Continue reading “Antique Rose Emporium in Brenham, Texas, and Memories of Roses”
Susan Rushton 