Roja malare rajakumari (aka my own Jackson & Perkins line up)

The roses are exploding all over Palo Alto! The moderate, dry weather here makes growing roses so easy. I remember my mother and her trusty gardener, Iyyasamy, slaving away in the hot, Madurai sun trying to coax the rose plants brought down from Kodaikanal to grow and thrive. Madurai has pretty clay-y, red soil and it's really hard to dig it and loosen it up. Once she got a cart load of chicken manure delivered and mixed into the soil. How it stank up the place and how the dogs loved it! Anyway, the small leafed rose plants finally coughed up the flowers and we were all escstatic! But they never did do that well - they were plagued by black spot and leaf-cutter bugs and soon died. The next summer, back in Kodai, we'd get another set of cuttings!

So I'm particularly proud of my line up of roses this year.....I chose all of them for fragrance and fullness - I don't care for the angular perfectness of the tea roses, preferring the floribundas or grandifloras....don't like red or orange roses particularly - a couple of these found me - they were cast away in a trash pile and I had to rescue them.

Has a delicate fragrance and starts off deep pink and then the petals yellow outwards leaving the edges pink. A very pretty rose that is about 3" across. I think this was called " Pink Lady" - not the most original name I'd say....


One of my two climbing roses - Sunset Boulevard - has a spicy smell - I thought it would be more yellow and less peachy....I wish this would climb a bit more and cover that ugly garden shed....


The other climber - Strawberries and Cream. The photo is out of focus...this rose was a mild disappointment - despite the evocative name, the rose manages to only look speckled and the smell is not memorable. But if this climber covers the shed, I'm sure it will look glorious along with Sunset!

"Texan Beauty" - this is a bush rose and smells like cloves -as weird as it sounds. The rose is beautiful but has a fatal flaw - it seems to get too heavy for the stem and droops as it opens fully. Dew makes the matter worse...but the bush is covered with flowers. Pretty.

"Queen Esmeralda" - isn't she perfect? When the bloom opens, the color fades to a pale, pale rose. Smells heavenly - very "rose-like" if you know what I mean. Great long stemmed roses that stay for a long time after being cut. Despite my efforts, this plant is plagued by black-spot each summer but soldiers on, producing tons of flowers! This rose was in the garden when we bought the house...I'm glad it survived my gardening!

Another inherited rose - don't know the name - but it's a great one. Large pink flowers - about 5" across on long stems. I give a lot of these to my neighbors because they stay for a long time in vases without dropping their petals. Smell divine!


A "Cecile Brunner" rose...I lied about having only 2 climbers - this one too...the rose is most like the "table roses" of Kodaikanal and have the same smell. The plant bursts with blooms and this one is trying to climb on the bougenvillea ....I love this dimunitive rose with a large presence!

The orange, rescue rose...I found it on top of someone's garden trash. The roses are pretty and prolific but the plant has the most vicious, spiteful thorns ever. And this rose drops its petals as soon as you cut the flower and put it in a vase! Pretty good defense I'd say.

I think there are 4 or 5 more roses that are about to bloom ...Queen Anne of Denmark (a white delicious smelling flower), the most red one in the garden (a rescue) and a couple more...I did not realize I had so many.My mother-in-law once gave me a t-shirt that said - "Never enough roses". True.