He and his wife raised roses, of which his favourite, he joked, was "Royal William".
This affects members of the rose family, of which loganberry is one: if you dig up one family member and plant another in its place, the new plant doesn't thrive.
It includes a pink Oriental lily, three green mini cymbidium orchid heads, two dark green chrysanthemum blooms and – in honour of Valentine's Day – two large headed roses, all of which is balanced with Oriental grasses and foliage and arrives in a black, square-shaped vase.
So I would hardly describe myself as an environmentally tone-deaf hog who doesn't give a hoot about the planet, even as I waver deliciously between a Fendi handbag decorated with the picture of a horse and a Lanvin one imprinted with lurid cabbage roses — both of which, despite their four-figure price tags, are made of glistening plastic.
As recently as the 1980s, it was so reminiscent of a village laid bare by hard times that Woody Allen chose it for the backdrop of his 1985 movie "The Purple Rose of Cairo," which takes place during the Great Depression.
Her performance — a feat of precision timing, manic narcissism and chilling determination — has been so successful that Mr. Sondheim and others have persuaded Ms. Staunton to take on another gorgon, Momma Rose of "Gypsy," which has songs by Mr. Sondheim and Jule Styne, in a British revival being planned for 2013.
In 1955, Miller had had his own million-selling record with "The Yellow Rose of Texas" (which was also used to good effect in the fight scene in the diner in Giant) and he started making sing-along albums by Mitch Miller and the Gang, at first a 20-voice male chorus.
(Others include Seamus Heaney on Wordsworth, Don Paterson on Robert Burns, and Ted Hughes on Emily Dickinson, all of whose poems can, strangely enough, be sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas", which spoils them somewhat; plus Alan Hollinghurst on A E Housman, a poet I unfortunately cannot read without giggling).
"Look at Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, which features a plot where characters escape their boring, humdrum lives by going into a movie.
Although he was in the middle of composing his next opera, The Rose of Persia (which was to be his last completed opera), Sullivan agreed.
