Thank you, readers, subscribers, and thank you, inspiring Substackers! In the midst of winter, this from July, telling us there’s always the roses (and Wordsworth’s daffodils) to remind us:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
. . .
alan girling
Pilgrimage Eighty-six and still she can’t get over the roses. Each year, the solstice coming, she collects her camera, makes her way over the bridge to my neighbourhood, and to my garden’s gate. “Your house makes me think of Tuscany!” she declares, though she’s never been, and memory flashes to the same gushing inflection: makes me think of Tuscany spoken at the door some fifteen years ago as the realtor took us room to room. “That was me!” she says. “It’s the way I picture it. Like Tuscany.” But it’s not the house she’s here for— it’s the roses, masses planted before my time, like Tuscany, several hundred at least, a thousand maybe, exploding along the path from the gate to my door, each one blooming a luminous white, a tableau of stars, and like stars, without significant fragrance— a milky way blessed by one of its own suns. She snaps a photo. “I keep them in an album,” she says. Each year, she crosses the bridge, and each day, as the season warms and cools, I open my door to the roses. Now out (and in) with the old and in (and out) with the new! Thank you and see you next year.
Ack! The horror of a last minute edit gone wrong. 'That would've been me' became 'That was been me' which of course should be 'That was me'. Fixed now, but the damage is done!
What a gift