My Birthday Roses - an Annual Family Tradition

You can just see the window sill in the bottom right-hand corner!

The rose is the June Birth Month Flower.

And anyone who has been following my blog over the years may have noticed that I have a very special reason for wanting the pink roses to be blooming on my birthday.

I always hope that they will be out in time because on the day when I put in my very first appearance, 9th June, 1943, my mother was given a posy of pink roses, blue love-in-a-mist and white border carnations.

It was war-time and my family of eight had been bombed out of their home. They were re-housed in the only house available that was large enough for all of us. But it needed some repairs to windows and ceilings that had been affected by the bomb blasts. And it was the men who were working on those repairs who picked the posy from the garden and presented it to my mother on my arrival.

So it became a little family tradition that when I went away to boarding school, and later to university, my mother would send me a posy by post for my birthday.

Now I grow my own!

Usually, the Albertine is just about flowering by my birthday, though last year, after an unusually cold spring, it was a close-run thing. But I was able to pick a bud that was far enough advanced to open out in a vase indoors.






This year it hasn’t been in any doubt – and for the first time, I really can just about pick the Albertine Roses from the window of my back bedroom.




Even with the Internet at my disposal, I’ve never managed to identify the pink rose from the front garden of the house I grew up in. It was a very ‘cabbage-like’ rose and it was a much more of a 'candy pink' than the Albertine. 

But I think it was somewhat like the roses I painted in watercolour for these birthday cards –

Pink Roses June Birthday Card to Personalize by poshandpainterly

You can see the full range of

'Summer Days', Pink Rose, Birthday Cards

as well as some matching Giftwrap and other stationery,

HERE