Lady Banks is one of my favorite roses--an old rose, introduced into the trade in 1824, according to some sources. To call her a "vigorous grower" is to vastly understate her capabilities. She grows very large--very, very large. Last year, she ate the trellis on which she was supported and had to be cut severely back and re-trellised, with a much sturdier construction. This year, m'lady is not quite herself, but still beautiful. Next year, I'm sure she'll be fully recovered and ready to eat this trellis. But her trailing bloom sprays are gorgeous, especially after a rain. See for yourself.
I finished the galleys of Cuckoo Brow and shipped the marked-up pages (there weren't many) back to New York. I've been waiting impatiently for the copy-edited manuscript of the Book of Days, which was due to me last week. I'm told it will finally get here tomorrow. I'm a little afraid to see it. It's a largish book with a lot of Latin plant names, quotations in odd dialects of 17th-and 18th-century English, recipes, crafts--too many places for letters and numbers to go wrong, in spite of the author's best intentions. I'm hoping it's clean, but I'm not optimistic.
Other than that, I'm thinking thoughts of the tour, doing some email and phone interviews with media in many of the tour cities, and hearing that the events with pre-registration are filling up. That gladdens my heart, believe me. There's nothing more daunting than four rows of empty seats, with a few loyal souls scattered in the back of the room. We shall hope for the best.
Reading Note, from Abby Frucht (quoted in Bonni Goldberg's Room to Write):
Think of all the other writers out there in the world, taking the same detour from word processor to coffeepot, thesaurus in hand, hopes in tow. We're all in it together, crossing over and over the elusive bridge between words and literature.