Love that rose

Last Saturday we bought a lot of plants for our garden  from a local church fair.

They never disappoint with the range and quality of plants available for sale at very moderate prices.

It has taken me until today to get most of them planted out - oh dear.

I can blame the rain for some of the delays, we have had a lot of rain this week.

This morning looked like rain but I thought I would brave it and plant out anyway.  Amazingly the sun broke through and no rain at all so most of the plants are now in their new homes.

This rose, however, has been in our established rose bed ever since we came here.

It has soft apricots tones and a delightful perfume.  This particular one is a stunner, measuring 7 inches across.

All of the rose bushes are doing extremely well.  We are not sure the reason for the improvement.  It could be the extra rain this spring, or the fact that our hens have cultivated their roots for us, or the chicken manure mixed with pine shavings that we have been using as a mulch around the base of the plants.  Whatever the reason, we are really enjoying the first flush of roses on the bushes.