I have been engaged, this past week, with a wonderful addition to my gardening library, a coffee-table-sized book filled with beautiful pictures and tales of roses such as those that I worship. The book in question is Empress of the Garden, by noted rosarian G. Michael Shoup of the Antique Rose Emporium and it was evidently "self" published by the Antique Rose Emporium Inc. late in 2012. This one is a must have for all my fellow fanatics of old garden roses or "off-the-beaten-path" roses. For the rest of the world, pagan worshipers of Knock Out and its brethren, just move along please, move along: There is nothing for thee to see here, and Heaven forbid thee be offended, and forced to gouge out thy eyes if thou wert tempted to stray from the Knock Out altar.
G. Michael Shoup, of course, is the founder of The Antique Rose Emporium of Brenham, Texas, a garden that I was once blessed to visit with my family. Mr. Shoup groups the roses of Empress of the Gardens into 19 chapters that are titled according to the "behavior" of the roses within them; chapters such as "Drama Queens," "Tenacious Tomboys," "Supine Beauties," "Earthy Naturalists," or "Petulant Divas." Looking at the chapter headings, I was envisioning something different for "Supine Beauties," but the two roses discussed in that chapter, 'Red Cascade' and 'Sea Foam', were still satisfying, if only in a floral manner. For every rose in the text, Michael describes its background and characteristics, ending always with some adjectives to describe his imagined personality of the rose. For 'Red Cascade', for instance, he termed it "engaging, adaptable, exuberant." For 'Madame Isaac Pereire', she's "petulant, opulent, ravishing." You get the picture; actually you get lots of pictures, beautiful pictures of the roses and all taken by Shoup.
Through the pages are sprinkled a thousand sidebars, which turned out to be my favorite parts of the book. They are lessons all; how to peg a rose, the history of Bourbon's, a biography of Ralph Moore, and all written in a simple clear prose that kept me enthralled to the end. In fact, Empress of the Garden is the perfect gift for the rose nut, rosarian in your life, except perhaps for one drawback. This is a BIG book (12"X12"), meant for display, and it won't fit on your shelves easily, at least if they're like mine. I'd have preferred a more library-friendly format.
To this day, I still fondly recall our family vacation sidebar to The Antique Rose Emporium. My family thought we were only visiting friends in Texas and sight-seeing The Alamo and the Houston Space Complex. I sprung the Emporium on them on the way home, when they were at their most weary and thus least inclined to resist my passions. I gained some wonderful pictures from the trip, foremost among them the picture here of my then-very-young daughter standing next to 'Yellow Lady Banks' at the Emporium. And I gained some roses that still grow here in Kansas, squeezed into the back of the van alongside the suitcases and my children, who were only forced to endure occasional and random thorn attacks for the 8 hours or so it took to get out of Texas, cross Oklahoma, and come sliding up into Kansas. A small price to pay for the fragrant annual reminders of our trip, wouldn't you agree? Well, I think so, even if the now-teenager isn't as appreciative or cooperative today as she was when this picture was taken. What a trooper! 
