Smellovision

Rosa 'Summer Wine'

Many is the time that I wished that I could evoke the perfume of Norton Conyers through my writing. At this time of year I think you smell the garden before you start to register the individual blossoms. It would almost be worth walking around with ones eyes shut just to see if the scents start to become more descriptive as you were deprived of sight. Not all things in the garden smell good, the jeyes fluid that Giles has sprayed around the new hornbeam hedge to stop the squirrels ring barking them seems a really strange odour to come across, but when you see the poor young sapling that is doomed to death because it no longer possesses bark you perhaps will forgive it. Another pong that is not quite so easy to overlook is one of Shandy's forgotten rabbits, but we remove those as quickly as we can if we can find them!
Returning to more pleasant aromas the roses are at their peak right now, the above being one of my favourites,with the advantage of good red hips for the winter, funny to think that I used to dislike roses in general, regarding their thorns and long periods of dullness as not worth the effort. How wrong I was! The longer I garden and the more I learn I see that each and every plant has some merit, and if that is a good fragrance then it will always be worth planting.

"My garden, with its silence and pulses of fragrance that come and go on the airy undulations, affects me like sweet music"
Alexander Smith