A bit of trivia and history about roses for you {from here}:
Did you know they were in such high demand during the seventeenth century that royalty considered roses or rose water as legal tender?
And that they were often used as barter and for payments?
And that Napoleon’s wife Josephine established an extensive collection of roses at Chateau de Malmaison, an estate seven miles west of Paris in the 1800s. (This garden became the setting for Pierre Joseph Redoute’s work as a botanical illustrator. In 1824, he completed his watercolor collection “Les Rose,” which is still considered one of the finest records of botanical illustration.)
That’s nice isn’t it?
Now, this may be blasphemous, but when it comes to roses, I can take them or leave them. It’s their bushes I think. It never ceases to amaze me how such a beautiful flower can grow on such a straggly uninspiring bush. Sure their flowers are pretty, but to me, they are only pretty in vases, seldom on the bush.
So that’s why I was inspired to take the picture above. There are a couple of standard roses in pots outside our front door. Now standard rose bushes can be nice if a nice-ish shape has been achieved. Ours do not boast a nice-ish shape.
However, one day I walked past said bushes, and my head did the full cartoon-style double take. There on one of them was a bloom so stunning I had to run inside and grab my iPhone. (It’s so 2014 that moments like these MUST be captured for posterity! )
Its petals were unmarked and perfect, the flower was open just the right amount, and a full gamut of pink was on display.
Nature right?
Sometimes it gets things REALLY right.
