"Miss Mystery" is a rose grown from cuttings given me years ago by a gardener in Genoa, if I remember correctly. She's pretty mysterious, with definite affinities to the Teas, and perhaps more to the Giganteas; unable to make up her mind whether she's a shrub or a climber, or, at least, not making her intentions clear to her gardener, me. She grows in the front bed in a cage; as she kept going up and up, I built an extension to the wisteria pergola for her, which I plan to begin training her onto, as her canes are now long enough. I was cutting old wood out of her today. "Miss Mystery"s growth pattern strikes me as a bit odd. Her canes seem quite short-lived, which isn't what I expect from a Tea, and she seems to sacrifice growth as soon as longer growth shoots from the same cane, leaving the older shorter twigs or canes to die. The canes are rigid, not flexible, and don't have much of the bendy jointed quality that allows some Teas to scramble to considerable heights if they have support. It could be she's just not a very good rose. Such blooms as she does produce, however, long-budded and elegant, of a peach-tinted pink, tea-scented, are mighty nice. I'm still hoping that if I can let her grow tall, and lay her out horizontally on the pergola (this all sounds quite racy), that she might grow and bloom well.

About roses in trees, something I realized this year is that the tree foliage matters. I have the double yellow Lady Banks rose growing up into flowering ashes, which have deciduous foliage that twinkles in the sun. Result: the flowers are nearly invisible, which is pretty sad when you have a double yellow Lady Banks rose (two, actually) climbing trees. Roses also seem to be generally invisible when seen against the sky (laburnums, too). On the other hand, the three ramblers climbing into a pair of Leyland cypresses down in the big garden look just fine, the clusters of pink and white flowers peering out of the dark green opaque foliage. Also 'Awakening' climbing an Italian cypress is fine, likewise the various roses scrambling through shrubs, all, as far as I can remember, evergreen and with substantial foliage. It's something to keep in mind.