Santa Cruz Magazine

A couple of months ago, Bill Grant emailed me about wanting to get Santa Cruz Magazine to do an issue on local roses. Would I be interested in participating. Santa Cruz Magazine decided to do an article on local roses, and wanted to interview Bill and me. I got an email sometime in January that Justine DaCosta would be calling me soon. I didn’t hear anything for a week or so. But when I went to the Great Rosarians weekend, and spent Friday night at the Motel 6 in Newbury Park, I called my husband to say I’d arrived safely. He said Justine had called that day, saying she’s been sick, and was now approaching the deadline for the article. So in the motel room, I had a long phone interview with Justine. A convenient time for it, as there’s not much to do in a motel room in Newbury Park.

This morning, the Spring 2011 issue of Santa Cruz Magazine arrived with the newspaper, so I had my first look at the article, having very little recollection of what was said in the phone interview. It came out pretty well overall. You expect a few glaring errors when non-rose people write about roses, but the only glaring one was in the interview with Bill, where it mentioned Belle of Portugal at the Bayview Hotel in Aptos, a yellow rose. Well, it is Belle of Portugal, but certainly not yellow. For the part on me, there is only one sentence I’d like to elaborate on: “Perry once spotted a lovely green rose in front of a Victorian on Broadway.” For the article, that’s fine. But I didn’t spot it. I was invited by the owner, Keith Kraft, a friend of mine, to see the roses he had. The house was built by one of his ancestors, and there were roses of many periods in the back and side yards. In the back yard was a very healthy plant of Rosa viridiflora, also called The Green Rose. I would never call it lovely. It’s an interesting mutation of the China rose, Old Blush, which instead of producing petals, produces dozens of sepals. You can see pictures of it here:

Green Rose on HelpMeFind

Since most of the people who see this blog don’t live in Santa Cruz County, I’m pleased to report that they put the magazine online. They don’t have the new issue up yet, but here’s the link to their homepage:

Santa Cruz Magazine
Just mouse over “read it”, and click on “latest issue” when they get the Spring issue uploaded. It starts on page 10. The cover photo shows sky divers over Santa Cruz County. I can see where my house is in the photo, but it’s too small to see it. I’ll have to get out my magnifying glass.