Turn to the right where Dublin Bay radiates red and Friesia the brightest yellow sunshine. Charles Austin and Clodagh McCredy offer hints of apricot. It is a child's paintbox of adult beauty.
It explains why most towns seem to have a rose garden. If nothing else, it offers somewhere to escape the mall.
It also explains why, at this time of year, I take a rather more active approach to weeding; nothing should detract from the stars of the show.
My fingers shimmy down the offending stalk until I reach ground level then out it comes, root and all. Pesky invader! I berate each one, using my best invective.
Part of the pleasure when you grow your own is bringing armfuls inside to brighten the interior. Because they're not pumped full of anything unspeakable, they only last about three days but they can easily be replaced by another armful.
But cue foreboding music. Already, on some of the less hardy varieties, signs of the cycle are appearing.
Some of the lower leaves are showing signs of the dreaded black spot. Oh, I know they can be sprayed but that to me is getting too silly. It's all part of the cycle.
Soon other plants will be affected and the flowering will diminish. I'm always able to cut a bunch for inside the house right up to July but the display will never be the same as it has been for these last three weeks. Deadheading will encourage new growth but it will never match the November showing.
Blackspot, mildew and rust will increase as the season goes on. These will be followed by mumps, measles and dyspepsia so that, by July, the garden is no more than a collection of bedraggled bushes highlighted by the occasional persistent Iceberg blooming through.
More weeds might be ignored. All part of the cycle.
Time for surgery. Gloves, saw and secateurs required. Tetanus shots up-to-date. Time for several days of battle with thorns and difficult branches.
You can remove great chunks and have a giant bonfire but, because fires are rather antisocial, I tend to snip my chunks into small asparagus-sized pieces so they can be put in the big green wheelie bin over the following three weeks or so. It's an arthritis-inducing activity but a pleasing reminder that the asparagus season is only a month or two away.
The garden must now go through the low point of its cycle. On display are a series of...well...bare sticks.
But on the end of each stick, little nodules brim with new life which will soon burst forth to be feasted on by aphids. Again, part of the cycle.
Over the next few months the new shoots grow and bud and, by November, we are back to the peak of the cycle and we realise why we bothered.
Nothing seems to embody the cyclic nature of the seasons more than roses.
