Marjorie Fair

It is rose season in the South!  The Lady Banks has long since bloomed, but now Prosperity, Climbing Pinkie, Sombriel, Old Blush, and my pet, Marjorie Fair, are in full bloom. 

Across from my house there used to be a garden fondly named "Miss Mary's Rape Garden."  No joke.  The story I hear is that many years ago the lawyer who lived in the house a block over earned a good deal of money defending a rape case a county over.  With the money he earned from the case, he had a garden on the back of the property planted for his wife, Miss Mary.  When I first moved into this neighborhood   remnants of the garden remained, dark and  overgrown.  The lawyer and Miss Mary no longer lived in the house.  The next owner sold the back of the block, and a house was built on what used to be Miss Mary's Rape Garden. 

Around the edges of the property were garden remnants, to include a rose that I never failed to see during my neighborhood walks.  Late spring, early summer this brilliant rose would peep out of the weeds on strong stalks after being mowed down by mowers, even during years of severe draught.  Which told me it was a real survivor.  I was so impressed with that rose's determination, I decided I had to have one.  So I took a clipping and looked her up.  It turned out to be a Marjorie Fair. 

I ordered a Marjorie Fair from Antique Rose Emporium and planted it in my garden.  It is beneath the diningroom window, and shortly after Easter every year, little red blooms start appearing through the diningroom window.  Jokes aside, nobody puts on a show like Marjorie Fair.   This rose has climbed all over the side of the house, gracefully I might add, and now covers a sizeable portion of the side wall of the house facing the garden.

Marjorie Fair is sometimes called Red Ballerina and Red Yesterday.  It is a modern shrub rose (1978), but it behaves like an antiques rose in its hardy lack of fussiness.  The blooms are not pure red, rather magenta with a good deal of blue.