So, I know they're not all roses, but in June, there's a week or two when the roses, in particular, are breathtaking. These photos were really disappointing for me when I finally downloaded them. They are so gorgeous. These are just the ones I see when I walk to the train station on Tuesdays and Thursdays to teach at the bank where Milan works. For a fleeting moment Grinava is exploding with the pride of Slavik gardeners. Only for a limited time: a couple of weeks.
These are just sort of a typical example of a Slovak flower garden.
These are still going strong, and we're finishing July now, but I long for some kind of landscaping around these suckers. They look like God took a crap in their yard.
I just thought these were so sweet. The roses here come in all shapes and sizes.
I particularly like these because they are our neighbors, but they hang over the fence, and we get to enjoy them too. They climb everywhere - even into the tree shown here.
Another typical rose bush. My mom often talks about the Japanese beetles that eat her roses at the lake. The US has been subjected to a lot of bizarre diseases because people from all over the world go there and bring their animals, plants, diseases and extraneous rose-eating insects with them. That doesn't really happen in Slovakia. They have their own special, evil diseases here that I'm slowly working my way through. We have no Japanese beetles eating our roses. However, we do have Japanese ballerinas, or at least we did until about three weeks ago. The Japanese girl in my Slovak class moved back to Japan. Her Slovak husband will follow in a few weeks. I was disappointed that they didn't talk about our grades in class this time, but I wasn't going to ask. I will tell you that I got a 90 on my Slovak exam, and although it was pretty basic, it also focused on things we learned the week before the test pretty heavily, and the memorization I did to prepare was moot because at the last minute the teacher announced that it was open note. So, I know more than most, but I have to say that I haven't mastered the conditional tense in converstaion yet.
This is not a typical representation of roses here, but I find it quite lovely.
I told the lady who owns these roses that I was lookng forward to her wall of roses as they began to bud. It's truly amazing, but they really don't smell. I miss that. Our neighbors at the lake, Nelson and Martha Miller, had a lovely old rose bush that had the nicest smell. Also, near where I lived in Paris, in the garden at the Musee Rodin, there are unbelievable roses that rise to at least 6 or 7 feet. When you walk through the rows of flowers, the air is just full of their perfume. It's heaven.
This is the crappiest looking apartment building, but they sure do a nice job on the flowers. Again, not roses, but they are just as quickly gone.
I like this house. It's unique in that it has this sort of oriental theme. The roses, and all their flowers are spectacualr.
PS - I'd like to add a little postscript in case you think I'm a little misinformed. We were driving in Pezinok this morning, and I saw some really nice roses. The roses don't go away completely like tulips or daffodils do, they stick around, but the glory of June 15th is never repeated. It's like fireworks on the 4th of July. Sure there are fireworks on other days, but the ones on the 4th are always the climax and they kind of make you forget about the others. So, we're explecting to continue to have roses, but it's just not like what you see here.
