It’s terrible when the iPad tries to help with spelling plant names. Something which normally seems so clever just falls apart when it hits a name like ‘Cayla’. Zoe Victoire Talon, the Comptesse, lived 100 years before the rose was bred in 1902 by Guillot (I have to fight to keep this from becoming ‘guillotine’). Her picture shows her looking elegant and refined like this rose.
The Comptesse du Carla rose is similar in many ways to mutabilis, one of my favourite roses. It has the same silky petals, changing colours from orange and red to pink and yellow, and flowers which point in all directions. Strawberry Hill by contrast is such an open, innocent rose, with a sweet talcum powder scent. In her third year in the terrace garden she is getting to be a big strong shrub. The Comtesse, on the other hand, had a difficult start in the gateway garden, where she was overwhelmed by three big shrubby wallflowers who stole her sunlight. Rescued, she is glowing now in the Citrus garden, next to very well behaved lilies. You can see how she glows in the sunlight in the picture below, which is a late attempt at the theme of 3, to celebrate three years of IAVOM. The sun was a little too bright for good photos, but shows up nicely the silky transparency of her petals. You can also just see the beautiful burgundy colour of the stems.
Other pink flowers here are Heuchera Coral Bells, Penstemon ‘Hidcote Pink’, Scented Pelargonium ‘Prince Rupert’, and Salvia ‘La Siesta’ which has beautiful dark purple bracts. White Lychnis and butter yellow Argyranthemum make up the bouquet.
Catch up with bouquets from the different seasons around the world at Rambling in the Garden.
Absent Gardener 
Beautiful! I knew your summery sunshiny vase would cheer me up after our frosts hit hard over the weekend! I love pink flowers that tend towards peachy yellow, like Comptesse. Very pretty Cath. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Thanks Cathy, Peachy is the colour name I was looking for, more pink than salmon. It’s pouring rain today, so I think I would prefer a nice crisp frost 🙂
Beautiful roses, it is such a pleasure to see your garden turning to summer. I hope you aren’t near the earthquakes.
Thank you, luckily for us the quake was further south. We are having another week of heavy rains, so it doesn’t feel so summery. Awful for the people who have been hit by the quakes, but I’m sure we will be grateful for water in tanks and reservoirs later in the season.
The roses are so beautiful – the spell checker comes up with some amusing tidbits sometime. I will eventually learn to spell chartreuse. From spellcheck.
Lovely times three. That pink, blush, peachy color gets me every time. I know it is salmon or coral, but I have been bitten by using those two words. I am a biologist. My wedding flowers were supposed to be coral /salmon, but instead were dyed neon orange. (Thirty five years ago- Hi ho)
I agree, ‘salmon’ is a dangerous description, never seems to be a nice colour, although if you look at the fish it’s pretty enough. I think ‘peachy’ is much nicer.
Real beauty ♥
Thank you 🙂
Your three matching jugs are such useful things – and what a lot of lovely pinks you have. It makes it all the more interesting hearing the background of your roses and how they have progressed in your garden Thanks for sharing ps I turn off predictive text on any devices I have!
Oh, sometimes predictive text is so useful, especially on the mobile where I always press the wrong letters. But sometimes it goes so spectacularly and stubbornly wrong. I hope I am here to have personal robots, I bet there will be similar issues in real life.