At last my books and I have a new home! When I wrote my last blog/article in August last year I did not realise it would be six months before my next. It is great to be back ‘at the drawing board’ so to speak.
The move from one house and county to another has been a logistical challenge but one that seems to be working out well. At least the books do not seem to have suffered from a month or two of storage and during their sojourn they acquired one or two other companions as a result of their owner suffering from withdrawal symptoms!
It has been a challenge but a privilege to be able to build, with the help of a few good artisans, a small bespoke library for the majority of the rose books and a great study where I have located the older precious books and all the paper ephemera such as catalogues and articles that this collector has amassed. I would say I started from a blank canvas but the canvas wasn’t particularly blank with a 1980’s fireplace (in an Edwardian house!) and carpets and curtains to match.
At one point I thought it would never happen and just when the end was in sight the boxes arrived! Wow – I could hardly move but it never seems to amaze me how quickly circumstances can change, especially when you have a couple of family members with strength and spirit and a huge amount of positivity. Hard work and sheer determination to see it through made us fitter and me wiser. Never again!
With this story unfolding I needed to use the time profitably so a fair amount of time was spent reading and researching, also searching for rose books I did not have. I must have acquired 20 or so to add to the shelves; a number through Bookfinder.com but also one or two from second hand book shops which I love to visit.
The total number of unique books, dedicated solely to roses, on The Rosarian Library shelves now stands at 580. If I counted duplicates, triplicates and so on there would be well over 1000. As I have had the time I have been through the list of titles quite rigorously deleting any repetitions or catalogues and articles that have crept in. The number of titles dedicated to the rose I currently believe to be 962 but, of course, I cannot have found them all so I would still like ‘to hedge my bets’ and suggest it may be nearer the thousand mark.
I realise that as a result of the research I have been doing I have collected many books on rose related topics such as the history of gardening, rosarians and gardeners, art and artists, the history and nature of books as well as many books with sections on roses. I love them all so have filled all my old book shelves with these. They reside in the studio on the first floor.
I don’t expect one can go through such a radical move without any traumas at all but I have had only one, namely British Telecom. In their efforts to keep me very secure I have been unable to use my email address so have had to change it, which has meant changing it on my website too. If you have tried to contact me through my previous email address I am sorry for my lack of response. Please go through the contact page on my website.
Please keep the requests for research coming in. I love to deviate from my own research in which I invariably get bogged down!