Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Well, Sunday, not actually today, and Sgt. Pepper’s Band has nothing to do with it. As I wrote here on the 1st:

Back in late January, I posted about a visit to the Gamble Garden in Palo Alto for a breakfast outdoors … That day was just after my man Jacques’s birthday (his 74th). Today is just before Jacques’s 2003 death day (on Sunday), so there’s a certain symmetry to these two plant postings.

Jacques was a plant person, roses especially, but also tree peonies and daylilies and tomatoes and lots more. He valued plants for their beauty, their scent, and their culinary usefulness, but was wary of plants whose attraction lies mostly in their quirkiness (like Kniphofia, or red hot poker, #1 in my recent Gamble Garden posting; and he detested the showy bird-of-paradise plant).

But the roses, oh the roses.

An earlier posting on J and roses, from 9/8/14:

My man Jacques was a great rose fancier, and occasionally brought hybrid tea plants for our garden back from the Columbus Park of Roses, where he worked as a volunteer. The hardiest of these, and his all-time favorite, was Mister Lincoln (Swim & Weeks 1964). A Mister Lincoln watches over his ashes in Maine.

From Wikipedia:

Mister Lincoln is a large flowered (hybrid tea) bush rose introduced in 1964. (AARS 1965). This tall red rose is renowned for its strong fragrance (in still air it can be detected up to 10 feet away) and its deep, uniform red color. It grows to about 1.2 metres high and 1 metre across. The leaves are matte dark green. The buds are deep red and open up into large, velvety red, double blossoms. It has typically around 30 to 35 petals per flower. It is a vigorous plant that performs well in all climates. ‘Mister Lincoln’ is hardy to zone 5-9.

This entry was posted on June 3, 2016 at 5:32 am and is filed under Language and plants, My life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.