The First Rose of Summer

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I'm so pleased with how things are turning out in my garden this year. I'm now slowly getting it back to how it looked in the summer of 2016 before I had an accident. I wasn't able to do anything at all during the summer of 2017 but was getting to grips with it by 2018. Now, this year, I'm really enjoying myself outside in the fresh air. I've taken cuttings from sage, rosemary and pink plants which all seem to have taken (fingers crossed!) and I'm now experimenting with a couple of laurel cuttings. Our neighbour to the left of our house recently had a new fence fitted between hers and ours and it's left a bit of a gap at the bottom of the garden that needs filling. We also have a gap between ours and our other neighbours' garden thanks to a rather drunk and over zealous previous tenant who rented the house for about a year and decided to take out two of our hedge plants and cut back our hazel tree and our cherry tree to the trunk. This hedge removal has left a gap on the right side of the garden so a laurel would be perfect there. Thankfully we now have a young couple with two children who don't touch anything which is part of our boundary. I planted up some lupins and dahlias a month or so ago and they're all looking quite healthy but I have to keep a close eye on the dahlias in particular as we do have a problem with snails and slugs. It's one of the very few inconveniences of living next to a meadow. This afternoon I popped out to do a bit of weeding and saw this little beauty peeping out from between some laurel leaves. We like to have a natural looking garden so I planted the rose bush close to the laurel so they could complement each other and this year that tactic seems to have paid off - the beautiful deep but bright red rose against the shiny green leaves of the laurel. We've found that ladybirds seem to like the laurel leaves but sadly there weren't any sunbathing on them today. I can't remember what my rose is called but It's definitely a smelly rose - has a sweet rose smell but with a hint of apple . I just had to share it with you.