If ever one of the compilers of rose variety catalogues—even the least famous among them—were to come across my blog, they would ask the cybercrime unit to shut it down for good, having read this post of mine in which I explain how I chose the colours of my roses by ‘stealing’ them from a pair of hydrangeas. I realise the paradox myself, but in this case it was… a matter of life and death. In the throes of gardening delirium, I had bought two hydrangeas for my birthday, innocently and naively seduced by the play of colours—at once delicate and brazen—that the eyes take in as they plunge into the labyrinthine twists and turns of those gigantic bouquets of flowers hanging from slender branches squeezed into tiny pots. I’d read that on a north-west facing balcony I might just manage to keep them alive. A few days later, I realised it was February. Yes, go ahead and laugh at my boundless ignorance.

I deserve it. I’d started looking into the matter and discovered that my plants had been ‘forced’ and that this year, in May – as would have been their natural cycle – they wouldn’t have flowered, given that they were doing so now. But above all that… Forced plants are more delicate. That if, unfortunately, one had decided to repot them, they would have been doomed to certain death within a week… Er… Yes… I had repotted them. Luckily, the bloke in the video had used a forceful communication strategy, because even as I now repost the piece I wrote some time ago, the plants are vegetating without any apparent damage. I’d put them in a double-glazed window, which is basically a heated greenhouse (since the inner pane is like a thin layer of toffee), perhaps very similar to the incubator where they were born. Every morning I’d open the windows to inspect the flowers and leaves, and sometimes I’d take them out onto the balcony for a bit of fresh air. Once they’d made a scene, turning up on the floor, fainted and dehydrated from a bit of wind, and I’d rolled my eyes: I’ve never put up with that sort of drama, not even from Anita. And since, like any silly mother, I’d fallen in love with my fragile little creatures, I’d decided that the colours for these letters of roses of mine would be theirs.