Rosa 'Susan Williams-Ellis' 30 June 2026

Robert Frost – 1874 - 1963

Nature’s first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf’s a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

In 1962 I was going to an American college in Mexico City, Mexico City College. One of my classes was presided by a man who had been a friend of poet Robert Frost, and astoundingly he looked like the poet. I was much too ignorant (and stupid) to appreciate his class so I sat in the back and yawned constantly.

It was only after I started writing these blogs in 2006 that I started associating my photographs and plant scans to poets and writers.

Today I saw this bloom of Rosa ‘Susan Williams-Ellis’ (and English Rose). In all my years of scanning roses (I may have at least 4000 plant scans) I was struck that this bloom was perfection. It was perfection even if you note the centre is slightly yellow and there is a tinge of red in one of the petals.

To make this perfection even more of a Platonic essence, when I saw the scan on my new (but used) 28 inch wide Acer monitor, it looked exactly like the rose itself.

I just wish I could return to that unnamed English Literature professor whose name I long forgot and tell him that I have found my way.