Everything's Coming Up Roses

Gertrude.

That's my Dad's nickname for me.

He gave me the name because, like the 19th/20th century garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, I've been known to while away the odd hour pottering around the garden. Funnily enough, her speciality was experimenting with colour schemes in her planting, an idea which suits me down to the ground [pardon the pun]. But I think that his decision to give me the name had little to do with that and rather more to do with thinking that calling me Gertrude sounded funny. Which it does. And that's OK.

Several years ago now, Dad discovered that there was an old English rose named 'Gertrude Jekyll' :

Image: David Austin Roses

Ever since then I've been planted in the garden of the house I grew up in, tucked in alongside the greenhouse. Pretty much where I spent my time helping Dad pot up seedlings and re-arrange plant pots in size order [OK, I admit that this last activity was just something I liked to do! Still do actually.]

Apparently Gertrude is a very hardy, reliable, short climber.

And so is the rose.

So, here's the next batch of prints added to my '365' pattern collecting Flickr project - appropriately themed:

[If you'd like to see any of the above images greater detail you can click here.]

Finally, I got to add something a little roseate to a scrapbook page last week too:

[The full page will be in the reader's gallery of the next issue of Scrapbook Trends [UK] Magazine.]

Overall this week, when I take into consideration the combination of:

• acquiring a pair of rose-printed tights [such joy!];
• booking myself into a workshop taught by Dina Wakley [too exciting] and;
• receiving lots of positive feedback on my new regular 'quotes' and 'overheard' posts [much appreciated xx]

... life really is quite rosy right now.

[What? A pun too far? Too cheesy? Yeah, OK, OK. Just accept my apologies and we can both move on].

Oh, and just in case the title of this post has planted a tune in your head ... here's your chance to have a nice, loud and uplifting sing-a-long-a-Ethel-Merman.

J x