An apricot rose

I have vivid memories of visiting the Rose Garden in Berkeley as a small child;  we moved to Texas the summer after I turned eight.  We lived in family student housing in Albany, as my parents were students there, so my Mom liked to take my sister and me there as an outing.  The garden was full of fragrant roses of all sorts, with a wonderful view of the San Francisco Bay.

By the time I returned to Berkeley, as a graduate student myself, I'd fallen in love with the natural world, native plants, and the myriad ways that plants connect our lives across cultures.  I still liked roses, so I visited occasionally, but by the time I started really becoming a gardener, I gravitated towards edibles and natives.

I did plant red tulips in my first bed at our first house in Statesboro, Georgia, as well as fruit trees, as they've been something I've always loved for some reason.  I'll have to think about the connection.

Regardless, we now have roses starting to bloom in our Quebec garden.  Clearly, the previous gardeners loved roses of sorts, from the Rosa rugosa selections, to shrubby small-flowered red shrub roses, to what else, I don't know yet.

But this apricot-colored rose is now in full flower at the very edge of our property, along the fence line, as we drive down the road.   It's quite lovely.