The last rose of Summer

'Tis the last rose of summer

Left blooming alone;

All her lovely companions

Are faded and gone;

No rosebud is nigh,

To reflect back her blushes,

No flower of her kindred,

To give sigh for sigh.

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one!

To pine on the stem;

Since the lovely are sleeping,

Go, sleep thou with them. 

Thus kindly I scatter,

Thy leaves o'er the bed,

Where thy mates of the garden

Lie scentless and dead

- Sir Thomas Moore

The last rose of summer.. for our garden

It's the last day of August. 

Summer, glorious summer, with its beautiful blooms, its riotous abandon of colour and heady fragrances, its long and sometimes sunny days, is officially almost over. 

The nights will now get longer, the flowers will vanish as will the greenery and soon there will come a time when I will no longer be pottering in the garden with my 2 little brats carrying the hose pipe, unmindful of the fact that they were spraying their clothes rather than the plants.

The pristine beauty of a white rose bud 

Having put down this very melodramatic (Well, what do you expect? I am Bong, everything I do is melodramatic!) and poignant goodbye, have got to admit that this was one of the best summers I have ever had. The day I walked in and saw what shall hopefully be our home for the next few years, I fell in love, even before I entered the house! There were roses and poppies in bloom, a grape vine climbing all over the garage and apple trees and camellias in the backyard. For someone like me, who spent her free time at florist shops and spent a significant part of her income on fresh flowers, nothing could have been more heaven sent! At that point, if the roof fell over my head, I wouldn't have cared! 

I have spent most of my free time in these last few months of summer in the garden - weeding, watering, and sometimes planting flowering shrubs that I thought would a little more colour and whimsy. I have learnt the hard way that working in your garden is nothing as romantic as Victorian ladies wearing gloves and carrying baskets and cutting flowers for the vases that they show you in BBC's Pride and Prejudice! I have learnt the art of ignoring and conquering the pain that comes from spending hours weeding the strawberry beds! 

I have made friends with the lady who runs the nursery nearby, I talk of plants and the weather and the rains not being enough for the plants with the elderly ladies who run the church playgroup, I buy plants at the Village Fairs and I read gardening books and magazines in the loo! 

But the best part of this summer has been seeing the flowers bloom and watching my 2 little 2yr olds develop a love for gardening; carrying the pots around in their little hands for me to water, carrying their own watering cans around to water the plants (they will very wisely inform you that plants drink water just as we eat food), and stopping to kiss the dandelions and chat with the earthworms and the snails (which always fills my not very animal loving husband with horror!)

As we say goodbye to this summer and wait for a even more glorious one next yr, I would like to share some pictures of flowers from my garden.

My favourite picture of 'em all  - of some enormous roses that I put by my bedside table 

A cluster of Rose spray

Another white rose

My favourite rose of them all - as large as a medium sized cauliflower, with no thorns and
an extremely heady, woody, non rose like fragrance 

Trailing geraniums on the kitchen window sill - spent a day trying to pull the ivy out and then finally just emptied out the pots, threw away the ivy, put in new soil and planted the geraniums and Viola!

A magnolia in bloom

Lilies (I think)

Dandelion - the Vs current favourite as they go blowing the seedheads and chasing the seeds 

Gardenia - One of my all time favourite flowers and one of the first I planted. This was its very first bloom

Poppy pod - for a Bong who loves Poshto, even these are as gorgeous as the blooms

Faded beauty

Another of my favourite plants - the snow daisy

More snow daisies

Achillea Pink. Still waiting for the yellow Achillea to bloom

Chrysanthemum

Bought this Cosmos at the Village Fair for 50pence per plant. Had no hopes of them surviving.
Not only did they survive, they keep blooming nonstop

A petunia. Never appreciated how pretty it is till I planted it as a filler between some other plants in the flower beds

A Pansy growing wild. The day the first one bloomed, spent quite a few hrs on Google to find its name! :)

And finally the beautiful Clematis. I hadn't heard of it or seen it before.
I picked the creeper on an impulse after a stranger who watched me unable
to make up my mind on what creeper to purchase, recommended this.
This is what the flower turned out to be. Now can't wait for next yr when the plant will be climbing all over the walls.