Cruel to be Kind
Friday, May 31, 2019
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| Our back lane garden and our male cat Niño |
"You should have seen them a couple of weeks ago!"
To be heard in any Vancouver Rose Society open garden
Roses, cats and babies have something important in common. They rarely perform on demand. They
have their own personal priorities.
Our tiny
Kits garden will be open for the Vancouver Rose Society in a couple of weeks
and the roses are blooming gangbusters right now. Rosemary is upset and keeps
telling me we should have opened it in the first days of June.
I do
believe that between my hostas and Rosemary’s perennials there are more than
roses in our garden. But telling Rosemary this does not help.
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| Rosa 'Complicata' |
Looking at
my very large Rosa ‘Complicata’,
James Mason, Sweet Juliet and Maiden’s Blush I am most aware that roses have to be pruned
severely to keep them in check. In case of Maiden’s Blush and Sweet Juliet they
are very tall and the blooms are much too high to smell the sweet scent of the
roses “up there”.
Many years
ago I photographed the concert of an English pop musician called Nick Lowe
whose extremely hummable Cruel to be Kind struck me as the song one should have
in one’s mind while pruning roses!
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| Nick Lowe |
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| Left, Jacqueline du Pré, right Abraham Darby. Some are 6 inches wide |
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| Centre Gallica Rosa 'James Mason' |
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| Rosa 'Sombreul' blends in with Philadelphus 'Belle Etoile' |
