Rose

This rose is my absolute favourite, not that I have many to choose from.  It's a bit of a star in my eyes - each year it produces the most amazing blooms, most of which appear on theneighbours north facing side of the fence!  It must be a very old rose - it was well established when I bought the house over 30 years ago and it's still producing stunning blooms.  It's a bit of a climber and grows in, around and through some trellis but it is showing it's age and I have come to the almost-decision that, later in the year when it's rose-pruning time, I need to remove a lot of dead wood and give it  a seriously heavy prune, encouraging, if I can, more growth to return to my side of the trellis.  I'm confident it's strong enough to withstand a heavy prune and I actually believe it will thrive once it's done.  And then, fingers and toes crossed, I will have dozens of blooms just like this one, each with the most amazingly strong perfume........

New visitors arrived late afternoon - it's been quite a busy time lately whih is good.

In COVID news today, there were 17 new community cases; there are 44 in hospital and 5 in ICU and there are 1102 active cases.  94% of the eligible population are partially vaccinated and 92% are fully vaxed - fantastic!  Hopefully not long now until we hit our first zero-new-cases day since we heard there was a new case in the community on 17th August.  Fingers crossed.