Every so often roses show up in books when we least expect them.

Such a thing has happened in a book titled "The Ghosts of Happy Valley searching for the lost world of Africa's infamous aristocrats."

The place Kenyan highlands on one side of the Rift Valley. The time mid 20th century. The people.....that you would have to read to begin to get a feel for the convoluted relationships. The politics unstable with the death of colonialism thrown in.

Now about the roses growing at the Equator at elevations above 5000'.

I was surprised when the first old homestead had roses.

"There were some old roses growing along the edge of the house; did Idina once supervise her shamba boy planting them?"

My first thought was....surviving at the equator without any classic rose care for over five decades? Must be old roses. Second thought: probably not once blooming because what are the odds that she was there the week they might have been blooming.

Then as I kept reading, the author kept finding more old homesteads, and all were no longer in the families of their first owner families, and she kept mentioning roses as asides. I stopped marking the pages where roses were mentioned with strips of paper (the library book was starting to look fuzzy.)

If you happen to be wandering through the area that used to be called Happy Valley in Kenya, and if you have a camera with you and time to search out these old homesteads, it would be really interesting to know more about these survivors.

Ann