A Monthly Dog Blog

Hello folks. Hope you’re all keeping well and a bit more cheerful now that the soggy earlier months of the year have passed. For the present at least.

We’ve now got the longer daylight hours and warmer weather, so it gives us a chance to be outdoors more often. And if you’re into gardening you’ll be for ever out and about, pulling up weeds, mowing the lawn, the jobs are seemingly never ending.

Bossman’s quite an enthusiastic gardener or used to be before his joints started to play up. And, in particular he adores roses. He takes after his grandmother there.

She was a keen horticulturalist and throughout the year there was always something in her cottage garden to be admired; from the tiny heads of purple and white crocuses that emerged in the early Spring to the towering, flamboyant pink trusses of Japanese anemones in the Autumn.

But roses were the true love of her life as evidenced by the cascades of blooms in June: the creamy-white heads of Moonlight: the heavy fragrance of Old Pink Moss: and the rich clove scent of Blush Noisette with its delicate clusters of small lilac-pink flowers.

Apparently, Bossman, in his early teens, used to lie on the sun-scorched lawn of her garden on a hot mid-summer’s day, eyes closed to the bleached-blue sky, ears filled with the hum of bees, and breath deep of the heady scents that surrounded him.

Even today, sixty years on, he only has to bury his nose in a fragrant rose and breath in its perfume to be sent spinning back to his memories of his gran’s garden and those abundant blooms.

His gran was also a dab hand at making potpourri. Rose petals would be carefully collected and then blended with lavender before being packed to small cream muslin bags tied with blue ribbon.

These would be liberally deposited in every cupboard, wardrobe and chest of drawers possible. One bag of crushed petals found their way into the crutch of her hubby’s long Johns – only discovered when he’d put them on and winced when he sat down.

Then there was rosewater. Bossman’s gran had a tried and tested recipe for making it. In late June, her kitchen would suddenly become a steamy scent-filled den with several black cauldrons simmering on her range. Bossman would be commandeered to help and would find himself perched on a stool, leaning over the range to stir each stew of petals with a long wooden ladle.

Occasionally, the contents of a pot would spill over with a hiss and a spit, a bubble of perfume bursting into the air. Gran would dart between the range and a bleached wooden table cluttered with bottles, rustling to and fro in a floor-length pinafore dress, pouring out amber liquids, sieving them through muslin, adding a pinch of this, a dash of that, whispering words Bossman could never quite catch.

She only needed a broomstick propped up in one corner and a black cat on the windowsill to complete the bewitching picture she conjured up. And her garden was certainly magic.

Since those days, Bossman’s tried to emulate that garden and attempted, on many occasions, to cultivate roses of his own. But sadly, he seems to be devoid of his gran’s magic touch. Green fingers have not been his forte.

Many a rain-sodden June, he’s stared glumly at his dripping rose gazebo, the wrought-iron pillars covered in a thin layer of leaves; the leaves covered in a thick layer of Blackspot. The buds of his soaked Malmaison roses have failed to open and look like sodden cream tennis balls rotting on their stems.

They say ‘roses grow on you’ but that’s certainly not the case where Bossman’s concerned as his attempts to cultivate them over the years clearly demonstrate. He has ramblers that have failed to ramble; climbers that have failed to climb despite being shown the way – carefully trained to trellis-work yet failing to grasp it. His floribundas too have flopped. And his China roses always look as if they’re on a slow boat back to where they came from.

Bossman’s got a grey, concrete aggregate statue of a well-endowed lady holding a bunch of grapes above her left ear. She was a reduced item at the Garden Centre as her breasts were chipped. He named her Gloria.

In Gertrude-Jekyll-mode, his intention was to smother Gloria with a mass of Golden Showers, picturing the sprays of canary yellow blooms cascading over her shoulders to cover her nicked nipples. Alas, no. His Golden Showers turned into a drizzle of  blooms that hung limply round her feet.

However, even if he’s unsuccessful in growing his own roses, there’s always the memories of his gran’s garden to fall back on. Tranquil summers’ evenings, the sun just having set in a molten halo of orange, fingers of warm air sifting through the roses, their fragrance heavy in the air.

Memories of June-days to treasure. I hope you have many too.

Love & licks from Dora xx  

P.S. My Bossman is Malcolm Welshman. 

His latest novel, Pets are a Pleasure, is available from www.amazon.co.uk

The paperback book is available for £10.99. Kindle price is £3.50.

Malcolm Welshman has his own website at www.malcolmwelshman.co.uk