god it's august already...? okay. anyway, i decided to kick this feature off by leaning into the more loveheart colour scheme i've been using and actually pick a red rose this time. hearts wasn't what i was thinking of (i was actually looking for hybrid tea roses to get that perfect traditional shape) but the preview for this looked hypnotically like a charcuterie board and by then it was too late. hearts is named for the shape the inner ruffles make, unlike it's variant "wanted" which forms a more rounded club in the center. the difference between the two breeds is what makes hearts interesting, though - grown fairtrade in ecuador, the two variants are grown split between the top and bottom of a local mountain & it is apparently the height and air pressure that causes hearts to look like that.

crazy to technically be on the third rose of the month as i type this, btw. anmyway this month's rose is another david austin special, a really pretty pale pink / white rambler that's best for garden walls and feeding bees. this one isn't dear to me for personal reasons but i think that white roses that aren't exactingly whitened go under-appreciated despite how much they're the first type i think of planting when i think about committing to dedicate six years of my life every summer to the purebred horse of flowers. i don't know why that is when the other colourways are so much easier to plant a traditional cottage garden in but i assume it has something to do with the kind of roses i grew up seeing mostly wild in the same areas we picked blackberries in.

i figure we'll start this feature section with the type of rose that i grew up around, growing wild next to the blackberries and stinging nettles along all of the roads in southern england that i walked to-and-from school along & the rose that the rosehip teas i grew up making were sourced from. they have a lot in common with appletree flowers, but far more secured petals and a hardier center. i love a lot of carefully curated and legacy roses, but i always find myself circling back around to the kind that grows by itself and for itself regardless of where it takes root. i'm also just really charmed by one of the alternate names for it reminding me of bedknobs and broomsticks, which is not a good film by any measure excepting the fact that i loved it as a child.

technically not rose of the month, since when i started posting these i went immediately for the rose that produced the rosehips i grew up drinking in tea, this rose was the first actual rose to feature on the site as the old background before i found the current pattern instead. i would say that i'm fond of her the normal amount i am of any rose that is a) pink and b) bred into that same bowl shape that makes peonies so charming to see in gardening shows. her being a climber as opposed to a pot-plant is another score in her favour. i'm sorry i never gave you a feature and then fired you.