Feeling sad ... sigh. The wind-and-rain storm came through here like an express train last night, and when I went out for a breath of fresh air, in a break in this incessant cold rain ... Charles de Gaulle is down. I'm kicking myself now, because in ten years I never troubled to photograph it properly. It was always just ... there. It was the old rose tree Zolie loved to climb -- which is why the only longshots of it are ones in which she's perched.
It was always outrageously difficult to photograph its huge, mop-head flowers, because almost as soon as they opened, they began to spoil; and, fair to say, the place it was planted had a fence in the background in one direction, plus the neighbour's shed, and from t'other side it was lost in the background clutter of the lemon tree. So I put off and put off photographing it, even when it was in full bloom, with a dozen or twenty huge flowers. Then suddenly, it's too late.
Soooo ... the plan right now is to take several cuttings off it, while the plant is still viable (tomorrow morning), and it's also possible that one or more of its numerous runners might be nurtured into a new shrub off the old root mass. But at the moment ... there it is, sheared right off at the base and lying flat in the area Dave calls "the plum pit," because it's a sunken garden where the old plum tree lives. Sigh.
And yes, I shed a tear. In fact, I shed a lot.
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