Anybody has kept up with this blog since I started in January 2006 must know that I (and Rosemary, too) am crazy about roses especially old roses and English Roses.

Since about that time I have perfected my technique of scanning them with my Epson flatbed scanner. These scans are an accurate record of the roses and other plants from our garden. Some are no longer with us and somehow those scans are comforting to me that my roses, those that died are alive in my memory.

One of my constants is to post a blog with the first rose to bloom in my spring garden. For many years the honour went to the Rugosa, Rosa ‘BlancDouble de Coubert’.

When we moved three years from our large Kerrisdale garden to our present (and small) one in Kitsilano we could not bring all our roses. My eldest daughter is a school teacher in Lillooet with an almost acre sized garden. Since she is Zone 4/5 we gave her many of our extra hardy Gallicas and Blanc Double de Coubert, being a rugosa, is hardy, too.

At today’s date, April 27 my first roses to bloom will (I repeat will!) be either the English Roses, Rosa ‘Fair Bianca’,  Abraham Darby or the Gallica, Rosa ‘Charles deMills’ or James Mason.

But I can cheat if I want to. I purchased on Thursday at the Save-On on Main and 16^th (can you imagine finding this rose there?) the Canadian Explorer Rose, Rosa ‘John Davis’. We bought, two as this rose is Zone 2b so it will do just fine in Lillooet. The rose is supposed be fragrant. Perhaps because of the cold I have yet to notice any scent.