Roses with thorns

I planted out some new roses in our front garden this weekend. I'd never given great thought to roses, but before we moved into our place it was vacant for a year, and the only things that were still alive were the roses (and seven(!) grapevines out the back). Since then I've killed a couple of drought-tolerant natives, but the roses have just happily bloomed away.

We had three red Camp David roses. Not what I'd've chosen, but they're tough and they smell good. A really fifties-style, velvety, bright red hybrid tea rose. I've just cut a couple of put them in a vase for the first time. I can never decide whether to cut flowers and enjoy them inside or leave them outside to admire whenever I leave the house!

I bought a fourth Camp David to keep things symmetrical, and then two Jude the Obscures (one for each side of the path). I love their big, creamy cabbage-heads, and they smell so beautiful - like roses mixed with grapefruit! A funny match with the crisp red Camp Davids, but I like it! I also like the name. Hardy's Jude the Obscure is such a grim, dreary novel that it seems like a nice gift to the fictional Jude, that, one hundred years after publication, one of the best David Austin roses was named after him. That's got to be worth something.


Hopefully they're not planted too close together. I'm hoping they'll make a bit of a thicket to screen our house. And, as BCB just told me that a couple of girls that live in our street were assaulted last week, and the word around is that someone in the street is dealing, I think we can do with all the thorniness we can get!

(our street has a pretty unusual composition. Drugs and muggings are simultaneously expected and completely unexpected. I might blog about it sometime, I think).