My Vita Sackville-West Rose

A flowerless room is a soulless room, to my way of thinking; but even one solitary little vase of a living flower may redeem it. ~ Vita Sackville-West

Flowers really do intoxicate me. ~Vita Sackville-West

Several years ago we took Gary's parents to Sissinghurst Gardens for their 50th wedding anniversary. The garden was developed by Vita Sackville-West and Sir Harold Nicolson around the surviving parts of an Elizabethan mansion.

On the property is a cottage called the the Priest's House. Climbing up the outside wall was a climbing rose I fell in love with. We were living in a flat at the time. When we finally bought a little terraced house on the Sussex coast one of the first things I planted was that rose.

It is called a Madame Alfred Carrière rose, Victorian, 1879. It has yet to turn into the fragrant, lush climbing rose I admired at Sissinghurst. But here it is: the first bud of the summer! I fall in love with it every year!