One (Minor) Autumn Musing
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: One (Minor) Autumn Musing
- From: t*@eddy.u-net.com (Tim Longville)
- Date: Sun, 03 Oct 1999 19:00:35 GMT
There's an ancient British expression - 'after the Lord Mayor's
show...[comes the dustcart, rubbish-collectors, etc]' - which is
roughly how I feel about commenting on or adding to Dave's autumn
riches - but I have at least one surprising and I think successful
combination to report: the 15'x15' of the climbing rose 'Alister
Stella Gray,' with clusters of apricot flowers fading to white, mixed
in with the 18'x10' of Solanum rantonettii, covered in hundreds of
deep purple potato flowers. The combination's only there because this
is a TWO-person tiny garden and the two people have different
obsessions - the rose is part of Celia's and the solanum is parat of
mine - so I guess the combination is 'ours' - and we're very pleased
with it - and, of course, though the amount of conscious intention
involved was negligible, with ourselves.
(Incidentally, is 'Alister Stella Gray' - or is it Grey? - MEANT to be
such a late flowerer? It always is here, starting later than any other
rose in the garden - often not until the end of July or even early
August - but often still flowering hard come Christmas. Am I right
that it's an Australian cultivar?? And somebody once told me that Mr
[I think] Gre/ay had his slightly odd name 'cos his parents decided
before their infant was born that if it was a boy it would be Alister
and if it was a girl it would be Stella - does that mean that if it
HAD been a girl she'd have been called Stella Alister Grey?! Does
anyone happen to know the answers to these not-at-all-Mediterranean
questions? Trevor? Bill?)
Tim Longville
