The rain gave the procession an authenticity that a day of glittering helmets might have lacked. Or perhaps reminded us of glittering sunshine at a Windsor wedding not long ago that came to grief. The weather had given the Royal gardeners anxious weeks recently. A Spring so uncertain and late makes ceremonial bedding even trickier than usual. The scarlet tulips at Buckingham Palace, calculated to bloom for the Coronation, were so late in opening that I gather the gardeners had pelargoniums ready to take their place at the last minute. Happily, slightly warmer days encouraged the tulips; they shot up to be on parade with the guards on the day.
Coronation Day and the first aphid squish of the year. Roses in bud and greenfly at work. The first roses here are the notionally perpetual Parson’s Pink China and Mad Alf (aka Madame Alfred Carrière) already twenty feet up the sycamore. I can’t reach the buds on Mad Alf to tackle the greenfly but the little china rose droops over a camellia close at hand. It’s pale pink, soft and drooping at the first raindrops; an unpretentious thing, but with a famous history as one of the original progenitors of the roses that keep flowering, when conditions are right, almost year round: hence its alternative name of the Monthly Rose. I don’t really recommend it. It is the present performance of a plant that matters – except to historically-minded romantics like me. Who of course have a field day at coronations.
