Maybe Then I'll Be A Rose

Rosa Mundi (Green Linnet)

Listen June Tabor gardens in the Welsh countryside, a soggy place to grow roses, but she perseveres because she can't resist them: either in flower or in song. Ketzel talks with the folksinger about her newest CD, Rosa Mundi.

Singer June Tabor...

...and gardener June Tabor! Her own Rosa 'Camaieux'.

On the December day I interviewed June Tabor, she was preoccupied with the state of her asparagus. She’d rushed to the studio before she’d had a chance to cut off the plant’s ferny tops, and as the winds rolled across the Welsh countryside, she feared for its life.

How could you not love a woman who obsesses over her vegetables, takes her slugs on evening walks (and discreetly dumps them along the lane), and trims her hedges while singing to her dogs, cats and chickens? Never mind that she had the audacity to put a CD together based on plant songs!

Rosa Mundi is folksinger June Tabor's 11th solo album, and the only one with a deliberate theme. Her other releases include the songs of Richard Thompson, George Gershwin and the Velvet Underground. One of my favorite quotes about her voice is that it's "calmly mercurial;" add the agility of an oboe and the depth of a cello and you'll know why I wanted to feature this singer.

Tabor lives in an old farmhouse at the bottom of a hill, located at the border of England and Wales. Sounds like an must-do Morning Edition roadtrip to me...

More scenes from a garden June Tabor, a gardener after my own heart, wisely dug up her front lawn and put in a vegetable garden. Nearby, bursting out of a hedgerow, is Rosa canina. The so-called dog rose is a wild fountain of pink flowers followed by red hips.

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