Rosa Scepter'd Isle and a Rainy Saturday in July

Scepter'd Isle is one of my favourite roses, and I've planted it at the top of the steps leading from the top terrace to the rest of the kitchen garden, so that I see when I walk through the garden, and from the kitchen windows too. The flowers are a delicious shell pink, the sort of pink you want your lover's gift of drawers to be; shell pinks, oyster, ivory, palest pistachio; light and airy and gorgeous and wildly expensive and fabulous.I'm between scents at the moment, my favourite since its launch a few years ago is Coco Mademoiselle. I wear it all day, everyday. But increasingly I'm drawn to Soir de Lune especially since the salesgirl at House of Fraser gave me a little goodie bag with samples a month ago. I spray the perfume onto those gorgeous little fragrance cards, and tuck them in my underwear drawers; each time I open them, the scent wafts out to greet me. Oh how can I be so unfaithful to Coco Mademoiselle... all too easily, it seems.
This is how David Austin describes Scepter'd Isle: "This is a charming rose which bears numerous, cupped flowers, with yellow stamens visible within. The colour is a soft pink shading to a paler pink on the outer petals. Its growth is rather upright, with its flowers held above the foliage. It flowers freely and continuously. There is a powerful fragrance - an outstanding example of the English Rose fragrance, based on the myrrh note introduced with ‘Constance Spry’." And just look at the raindrop, captured at the base of this rose before it falls into my waiting hands. Roses, rainfall and joys in my heart.