(quote from This Rough Magic). And the light bulb went on.And everywhere, roses. Great bushes of them rampaged up the trees; a blue spruce was half smothered with sprays of vivid Persian pink, and one dense bush of frilled white roses must have been have been ten feet high. There were moss roses, musk roses, damask roses, roses pied and streaked, and one old pink rose straight from a mediaeval manuscript, hemispherical, as if a knife had sliced it across, its hundred petals as tightly whorled and packed as the layers of an onion. There must have been twenty or thirty varieties there, all in full bloom, old roses, planted years ago and left to run wild, as if in some secret garden whose key is lost. The place seemed hardly real. [ ]
... the old names which evoked, like poetry, the old gardens of France, of Persia, of Provence ... Belle de Crecy, Belle Isis, Deuil du Roi de Rome, Rosamunde, Camalieux, Ispahan ... [ ]
... The scent was heavy as a drug.
I have moss roses, damask roses, a rose pied, an old pink rose with its hundred petals as tightly whorled and packed as the layers of an onion. I have Belle de Crecy and Ispahan. I have Leda (aka Painted Damask). Their fragrances utterly fill the air with a richness of intermingling perfumes which is incredibly lovely,
I had read this book ages ago. Before I started collecting old roses. And I remembered this entire passage of the book -- when I re-read it, it was a old and familiar friend. And I wondered, and realized, that part of my passion for roses, and growing OLD roses (that is a classification of rose which generally means it was grown, or discovered, before 1900) came after reading that book .... and I laughed. Yep. Thank you, Mary Stewart.
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Has anyone else been inspired by books to add dimensions and/or adventures to your life?
