My Late Neighbour's Rose

 

This has been a very good year for roses. A warm dry June helped, and this old white rose has done incredibly well this summer. It's still flowering - just. 

It reminds me of my late neighbour, Mary Mackenzie, who gave it to me from her own garden. She called it the Jacobite Rose - not the small, sweet, wild rose of Scotland, but (I think) Rosa Alba which is also known as the white rose of York. Certainly a rose that has been cultivated in Europe since ancient times. 

It had grown very leggy over the years and I pruned it back quite a bit but it seems to have had a new lease of life this year.

Mary had several of these in her garden, along with masses of daffodils in early spring - she used to give me huge bunches of them to take up to the village cemetery after my mum and dad died - and then a little later on lots of crimson tulips and poppies.

She was one of the first female graduates in accountancy from Glasgow University. She was still doing accounts well into her eighties, including ours, and I vividly remember her finding an error on the self employed tax return (back when these forms were on paper) and phoning the Revenue to tell them. 'Oh no, Mrs Mackenzie,' they said. 'That couldn't happen.' But she was right. And many forms had to be recalled. 

She was formidably intelligent and formidably intrepid. Her husband, Bill, had been on the 1953 ascent of Everest, and although he wasn't with the party that got to the summit, he did reach the camp just below the peak. As a world class ski-er, he had also been involved in helping scientists to escape Nazi occupied Norway and had run training sessions for troops in the Highlands. But no shrinking violet herself, Mary had been a spy in German occupied France, had gone on many expeditions to remote parts of the world, and had survived a plane crash by crawling several miles through inhospitable terrain with a broken leg. 

When Bill died,  Mary was determined to walk up the hill with the funeral procession, but - then in her eighties - nabbed a lift in the funeral car half way up. 'I said I'd go on with him to the end,' she said to me, mischievously, 'But this might be a bridge too far!' 

I miss her and her wisdom. When, during her own memorial service, some years later, the minister alluded to her bravery during the war, we breathed a sigh of relief, because somebody had been spreading malicious rumours that this was untrue, that she was 'just an old dear, imagining things.'

Well, she was very dear to us, but she hadn't imagined or made up her extraordinary life. It's sad that sometimes, you only find out exactly what people have been and done at their funerals. 

We are all so much more than what we become. You only need to ask. 

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!