Two Indestructible Women
Friday, November 19, 2010
Juno was an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister (but also the wife) of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Her Greek equivalent is Hera.
As the patron goddess of Rome and the Roman empire she was called Regina and, together with Jupiter and Minerva, was worshipped as a triad on the Capitol (Juno Capitolina) in Rome.
Wikipedia
Friday was one of those typical (but hard to adapt to) gloomy, windy and rainy kind of Vancouver in November days. The shortest day (longest night if like me you are a pessimist) of the year, winter solstice on December 21st is not as noticeable as the Christmas lights are one and at least one knows that henceforth the days will get longer and spring will soon come.
I had a little walk in our garden. Rosemary’s late blooming and extremely blue fall aconitum were past but I spotted two beautiful blooms. One was Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Ayesha’ with its delicate and teacup looking little florets of pale pastel colours (the colour is I believe characteristic of a flower that blooms late in the season). The other was an English Rose, Rosa ‘Immortal Juno’. The latter has a powerful scent of myrrh and is a rose that its creator David Austin “delisted” from his stable of beautiful English Roses saying it was hard to grow and not a good example of his roses. In my garden Immortal Juno flowers sporadically as it is in a spot where it gets little sun. It is generally healthy and taking a sniff of its deep pink blossoms (again the pale colour here is as I suspect a late fall colour) is always rewarding.
David Austin called his rose Immortal Juno because of botanic rules that stipulate that if a plant with a particular name already exists a second and newer plant cannot have the same name. Rosa 'Juno"is a beautiful pink cabbage rose from the 1830s.
Ayesha
