Some roses like cats and babies do not perform on demand. Such has been the case of my three year old Rosa ‘Frau Dagmar Hastrup’. This is the first year it has bloomed and while it did so this past July today I spotted a lovely bloom. This rose is an extremely hardy rugosa rose. The name comes from the lovely (to me) texture of its leaves.

We had this rose years ago in our Kerrisdale garden when we moved to our Kitsilano pad we opened our garden there for people to take the roses they wanted. Of course this was after we chose the ones we were keeping.

There is something satisfying of having an old friend greet me this morning. I know that my Rosemary would have smiled had she seen this lovely apparition.

 The story behind the rose 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' (also known as 'Rosa Frau Dagmar Hastrup') is that it was discovered around 1914 by Knud Julianus Hastrup, owner of the Hastrup nursery in Denmark, as a chance seedling from his Rosa rugosa plants. He is believed to have named the silvery-pink, fragrant rose after his wife, Dagmar Henriette Vilhelmine.