Heirloom Roses - Summer's Blessing .. AT MY ROSE GARDEN

After a few parched years, rain at Christmas heralds a summer blessing this year.  Days of soft drizzle offer a gentle reprieve from the recent humidity and heat.   

The soft rain has generously endowed the mid-summer garden with lovely vignettes:

Brimming bird baths afloat with rose petals;

Luscious blooms of Red Pierre, a modern climbing Hybrid Tea reminiscent of old fashioned roses, decadently be-jeweled with rain drops;

Mrs B R Cant, a Tea rose, glorious in her lightly dusted mid-summer plumage;

Porcelain-like Tea roses, Safrano and  ...

G. Nabonnand, delicately lovely under their crystalline dusting of rain drops;

A splendidly plump bud of the modern shrub rose, Elina, luminous against dark rain clouds;

New plum-coloured growth of the Tea, Mrs Reynolds Hole, promising an abundance of crimson, richly perfumed late summer blooms;

Shy English Mary Rose peeps out, splendid with jewels, from under her shelter of feverfew;

And the exquisitely nodding heads of the rare Tea rose, Carlsruhe Maria Bruhn (purportedly the true Mlle de Sombrieul) are delicately pale and lovely under a drift of soft, summer rain.

Oh, and then there's the perfume of rain showers mingled with fragrant roses ... 
Summer's blessing at Christmas.