Albertine- My Birthday Rose

Albertine Rambling Rose

Shortly before I was born, my family of 8 had been bombed out of their home in East Cowes, in the Isle of Wight. Being wartime, even the house they moved into needed plaster ceilings and window panes replaced. And the work was going on around my mother, even as I was making my way into the world! 

I expect it was something to do with that 'war-time spirit' we hear of and I'm not sure it would happen today, but apparently, on my arrival, the builders picked a posy of flowers from the garden for my mother. It consisted of blue love-in-a-mist, white border carnations and pink roses. For many years, while I was away at boarding school, my mother would send me - by Royal Mail! - a bunch of those same flowers on my birthday, the stems wrapped in damp cotton wool (before the days of kitchen roll!) and a new invention, aluminium foil, all contained in another new invention - a plastic bag. Miraculously, they arrived in pretty good condition!

So nowadays I always hope to be able to pick those flowers from my garden for my birthday.

I have never managed to identify the pink rose and the nearest I've found is the Albertine that I love! With the bright, almost orange-pink colour of its buds and its unique and beautiful scent, it has to be my absolute favourite!

This year I had almost accepted that my Albertine would not be out on my birthday. For one thing, a friend cut it back very severely in May, in readiness for my cavity wall insulation in July. But apart from that, this has been the coldest spring for fifty years and everything in my garden has been late flowering.

But, right on cue, a bud I'd been keeping an eye on, opened out on Sunday! It was so high up that my very tall son had to use a pair of even taller steps to reach it, but that didn't matter. The one little Albertine rose was there in time for my birthday!

Here it is, in watercolour, on a Commemorative Wedding Mug:

Personalisable Vintage Pink Roses Wedding Mug by helikettle
 

And, in combination with Lavender and Mock Orange Blossom from my garden, in a repeating pattern on a Kindle Cover:

Custom Nostalgic Scents of Summer Kindle Case by helikettle

I'm sure those won't be the only patterns I design around my Albertine rose! So watch this space . . .

Roses Round the Door!

I should think most of us like the sound of an English cottage, with 'roses round the door' - but mine have rather overdone it this year!

The door above leads from my kitchen to the back garden. And it's an absolute joy to come down to in the mornings when the sun is shining through the roses and their leaves - but going in and out can be a bit tricky as the Albertine is a particularly thorny rose!

I took this photo a few days ago and now that some more of the buds have opened out, it's an even prettier sight!

Those of you who were reading my blog a year ago may remember that I always hope that the pink Albertine Rose, the blue Love-in-a-mist and the white Border Carnations will be blooming in time for my birthday in June. The story behind that is that on the day that I was born, the workmen who were repairing the war damage to our house, picked these flowers from the garden for my mother. Last year the Albertine just about managed to be out in time but this year, it's more of a worry that it'll be over and done with by my birthday! It began to bloom at the end of April!

 

A couple of weeks ago, we had gales that were more like March or even November but they didn't cause the roses to come adrift from their supports on the wall as they did in my Norwich house, where one day I went out to my car to go shopping and found it hiding under my Albertine! But a few days after the recent gales, we had heavy rain, which the gardens needed, but the weight of the wet roses was enough to make them sag somewhat - right where the Albertine overlaps with the Alchemist above the door!

My son is pretty tall and has a long reach, so when he comes down for my birthday, he'll be going up the step ladder to fix them back to the trellis!

 

I'm no photographer and these pictures don't really do justice to how lovely the roses looked in the early morning sunshine because the sun was full on them, draining the colour. But by chance, I've just caught the blackbird's nest in the top right hand corner of the photo, tucked between the eaves and the drainpipe of my neighbour's house. I have a good view of it from my bathroom window if I stand in the bath but it's too dark to get a good closer shot. Over the past couple of months, there's been a lot of commotion in the honeysuckle just outside my dining room where I mostly work and now I understand why! And even from indoors the birdsong is wonderful! 

Wales is sometimes called, 'The Land of Song' and when I first moved here, someone told me that even the birds sing more sweetly here; I think there's some truth in that! 

The roses seem to thrive in the heavy clay soil here too so what more could a 'not-a-morning-person' like me need for an uplifting start to each morning!

Can't you just smell them!

The Race of the Roses

There I was, wondering which of my climbing roses would be first to bloom this year - it's usually the 'Dreaming Spires' and it's looking promising, covered in buds and almost ready to open -

But the 'Albertine', the one that usually flowers for my birthday in June, is a close contender this year -

But it was only while I was taking these photos that I noticed that the 'Alchemist' has quietly pipped both of them at the post!

Nobody seems to have told it that it's still only April!

.

Why do we take so many photos?

This morning I took some time off to go out with the local walking group, 'Let's Walk Cymru', the Welsh equivalent of 'Walking Way to Health'. I had missed the last three walks due to a combination of pressure of work, my son's visit and my 'iffy' back so I decided that my work/life balance was in need of adjustment and made the effort to reach the starting point in time. Not easy because I tend to work very late into the night.

I was really glad I did because, not only was it a beautiful summer's day, but it happened to be the monthly 'out of town' walk, when we have mini-buses to take us out into country - and all free of charge! By my calculations, the trip out should have been last week and I thought I'd missed it but I was in luck. We were taken halfway up Little Skirrid, the small mountain my back bedroom looks directly out towards and we walked through the woods round the mountain, rather than up it because some of our members are in their eighties or suffering from various ailments.

But rather there, in the shade of the forest, than up on the exposed mountainsides in the local area as the sun was very strong and the weather forecasters had warned about very high UV levels.

Of course, as usual, I took enough photos to get left behind at times and it made me think about something I read about taking photos a long time ago. I think it was in a self-help book of some sort and it was suggesting that, in taking photos of everything, we were missing out on really appreciating what is before our eyes, that we are preoccupied with 'capturing' the moment rather than allowing ourselves to enjoy it.

I can see that there could be some truth in this as it conjures up an image of camera-laden foreign  tourists, snapping everything in sight, rather than 'soaking up the atmosphere' of a new place and its individual culture. And sometimes I do wonder slightly guiltily whether I do this myself because I do take an awful lot of photos! On the other hand, by way of justification, I remind myself that I use my camera as a sketch book and wonder how I ever managed without it because you'd have to draw/paint very fast indeed to record the changing light, which is one of the things I find so fascinating and try to convey in my landscape paintings.But then maybe my wish to make paintings from my photos, is in itself just as 'bad' as taking the photos in the first place? It's just another way of 'capturing' Nature's wonders.

However, there's something else going on here! When I look at the way my 'Albertine' rose is blooming so abundantly this year, it fills me with awe and I feel an overwhelming desire to share it - how else can I do this other than in a photo or painting?

So here are a few photos of my 'Albertine' - which, by the way, was in full bloom just in time for me to put some in a vase for my birthday!

Sadly, placing them on the table where I mostly work brought me out in 'flu-like symptoms - I even took my temperature, thinking I was going down with something, before I realised what was going on! - so I had to move them away until the fragrance began to fade.

'Roses round the door'

 

The roses to the left, around the bell, are the 'Alchemist', just above my fig, which looks a bit thirsty! The lavender (in the bed behind the open door) is just beginning to come out and salad leaves in the little pot to the right of it are ready to eat.

And this is the back of the arch at the side of the house - my view from the dining room where I spend a lot of time working! 

 

You can just about make out the arch that leads to my dining room French Doors at the righthand side of this next picture (turn left at the potatp barrel!) which shows the extent of the 'Albertine' on the right and the 'Alchemist' on the left! Also just visible at the top is the sill of the window I hung out of to photograph the first blooms!

 

And just one more close-up - that might have the makings of a painting for a greeting card one day!

Unfortunately technology has not yet advanced sufficiently for me to add the wonderful fragrance to the photos but I hope you will enjoy these photos anyway!