Roses and Writing: Perseverance Pays

 

I seem to be writing a lot of posts about roses just now, but they really have been spectacular this year here in Scotland! 

About twenty five years ago - perhaps a little more - we had an expedition to beautiful Holker Hall with good friends. That's a picture of our respective kids, before they became all grown up - Charlie and Lucy. 

They had got candy canes from the gift shop and were busy sucking away at them to turn them into sharp points, so that they could duel with them, as far as I remember! 

It was at Holker that I first saw how rambling roses could be grown into trees and how beautiful they looked. So the following year, I managed to buy a couple of suitably tall ramblers from David Austin Roses: Paul's Himalayan Musk, and another called Rosa Felipes Kiftsgate. 

It was ambitious, but we do have a handful of quite tall trees in our cottage garden.

Paul's Himalayan Musk took off right away. It was a few years before it was properly established, but look at it now. 

Kiftsgate was different though. It grew a bit, and then seemed to get some kind of fungus. I cut it back and left it alone. It grew again, but not much. And to be honest, I kind of forgot about it. It had been planted in a little shrubbery, with a gorgeous holly tree that grew taller every year. Sometimes I would see a few flowers, and sometimes I would trim back a bit of the resulting growth. Often I would think I should get rid of it, but then I would forget and just leave it to its own devices. The slightly chaotic shrubbery with holly, honeysuckle, spiraea and philadelphus, provides great cover for the smaller birds in summer and winter alike, so we trim it back a little, but otherwise leave it alone.  

Cue forward to this year, which has been a bumper year for roses of all kinds. The Himalayan Musk had flowered and mostly died back by last week, when I was standing beside the holly tree and suddenly noticed that here and there were clutches of rosebuds. Lots and lots and lots of them. 

Quietly and without fuss, Kiftsgate has clambered up and through the bigger branches of the holly tree - and here it is, twenty five years later, flowering beautifully and almost reaching the top of the holly. When I walk down the garden at night, I can smell the gorgeous scent of it. I can see it from my window as I type this.

As with writing, sometimes gardening just takes a little time and patience! 

My Scottish Cottage Garden - An Old Apple Tree

Right at the bottom of our cottage garden, here in the Scottish lowlands, is a very old apple tree, that a friend identified as Golden Noble - a very old variety of apple that is somewhere between a cooking and an eating apple. The fruits turn steadily more  - well - golden as they grow riper. It's a large sweet apple with just the right hint of tartness. Our tree is so old and venerable that it's on a two year cycle - but from the amount of blossom, this is going to be an apple year. In between times, we only get a little fruit while the tree has a rest.

The other thing I notice about this tree is that the blossom is always late. We often have late frosts after a warm spell, in this part of the world, so you plant out tender plants at your (or their) peril. But this old apple tree always waits, and waits.

With age comes wisdom, obviously!

A Room With A View

Ayrshire sunrise

We have had some of the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets I've ever seen, this year. It does your heart good to see them. Which is perhaps just as well, since the news elsewhere is so very depressing. But who wouldn't be slightly cheered by the sheer beauty of this view - one that I'm lucky enough to have from the room where I work.

I know writers who prefer to work in a room with no view at all. They tell me it's too distracting. Perhaps because so much of what I write has a rural setting, I don't feel the same. I love to gaze out of the window, between chapters, watching the slow change of the seasons. Even today, in early January, it's quite green out there and the garden seems to be full of birds. Yesterday, I spent an hour outside, sweeping up leaves, adding a little compost to some of my tubs and pots where those same birds had been rummaging and had dug up a few of my springtime bulbs.

It felt like spring. Of course, it won't last, but I much prefer January and February to November. It seems like the right side of the year, somehow, and quite soon, it will be obvious that the days are growing longer!