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| Rosa 'Fair Bianca' 29 June 2019 |
Sometime around 1988 we approached the then President of the
Vancouver Rose Society for advice on purchasing roses. One of her suggestions
is an English Rose that has been in our garden since. She is Rosa ‘Fair Bianca’.
For years I have told people that she is named for the much more pleasant
sister of that nasty and reluctant Katherina in William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
Fair Bianca is a reluctant bloomer and not very vigorous.
The plant we now have may be a second or a third purchase. When I look at the
almost white blooms that have a heavenly (for me) myrrh scent I remember Janet Wood
and her now gone garden in Southlands.
Plants and especially roses have a tendency to surprise.
Every once in a while Fair Bianca does not emerge completely white. Note the
pink dabs in this one.
Looking to find a quote by Fair Bianca to insert here I was
amazed that Goggle took me to Shakespeare’s Othello:
Cassio. What make you from home?
How is it with you, my most fair Bianca?
I' faith, sweet love, I was coming to your house.
Bianca. And I was going to your lodging, Cassio.
What, keep a week away? seven days and nights?
Eight score eight hours? and lovers' absent hours,
More tedious than the dial eight score times?
O weary reckoning!
With Fair Bianca having a double life in my garden I
smile at the thought that all these years the Fair Bianca in Othello was the
fairest of them all!