Lewes rose garden Archives - Wolfie Wolfgang

What happens if you go off to Italy for two weeks…

wolf01 — Mon, 24 Jun 2013 13:08:00 +0000

I have been in Italy for two weeks and very good it was to be there. I’ll tell you about it later this week but, for now, just believe me that it is exceedingly pleasant to sit outside your own front door on a sunny (and hot) morning, under your own grape fine, with an excellent cup of espresso coffee. The only trouble was…

…unfortunately, when I returned last night, I saw that my garden had been having a wild old time while I was away. Time for some stern discipline, I think, with string and secateurs. I’ve already started on it and it feels good to be home.

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The last roses of summer here in my Lewes garden.

wolf01 — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:54:00 +0000

It is a glorious day here in Lewes in Southern England but tonight we are promised our first frost. My roses don’t want to know this so I am keeping quiet about it but just in case, I thought I would take a photograph of my small town garden that really doesn’t want to stop flowering yet. It will be especially sad seeing my beautiful Falstaff rose wither on the branch. So I shall enjoy it whilst it lasts.

So here is that song, The Last Rose Of Summer – sung by the American soprano Renee Fleming. It is very beautiful and, of course, sad, as it is used by the German composer Friedrich von Flotow (1812-1883) in his opera Martha (1847):

Tis the last rose of summer,

Left blooming alone,

All her lovely companions

Are faded and gone.

No flow’r of her kindred

No rosebud is nigh

To reflect back her blushes,

Or give sigh for sigh.

I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one,

To pine on the stem,

Since the lovely are sleeping,

Go, sleep thou with them

Thus kindly I’ll scatter

Thy leaves o’er the bed,

Where thy mates of the garden

Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow

When friendships decay;

And from love’s shining circle

The gems drop away

When true hearts lie wither’d

And fond ones are flow’n

Oh! Who would inhabit

This bleak world alone?

I would have played Joan Sutherland’s 1961 performance of this song before now if she hadn’t always done it without the last verse but now I have said that, I can hardly leave the great soprano out of this blog (I try to include her wherever I can because I have never been able to hear too much of her) so here she is with that incomparable accompanist Gerald Moore.

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My Lewes rose garden is showing its colours.

wolf01 — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:01:00 +0000

Last week was the time for my roses here in my small town garden in Lewes in the south of England….

…the big prune in february has paid off…..

…and the different varieties have all stretched their wings and mingled with their neighbours giving me the first hints of my plan coming together. Next year, I hope there will be a great mingling of colours all along my traditional Sussex flint walls.

The other side of the garden is, for the time being, dominated by the energetically vigorous Iceberg but it won’t be long before the rapacious passionflower will compete with it here for space.

Let me introduce you to my roses…..please give them a warm welcome.

Falstaff

Dance de Feu

Claire Austin

Mortimer Seckler

Iceberg

Benjamin Britten

These are the current stars of the show but there are more to come and I will bring them to you as they appear – I wish I could give you their perfume but, maybe, one day computers will get good at that too.

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