Mother, nature

An unexpectedly warm start to September after some louring skies over the past few days. And some warm but fuzzy thoughts to match.

This climbing rose brightens up a sometimes dull part of our garden. It was given to us by my mother. For now, it is like she was: shades of pink and orange, and tastefully fragrant.

The past tense is deliberate: she said that her unexpected 19th birthday present was the outbreak of the Second World War, on September 3, 1939. As an accomplished German-speaker, she was later to deal with Jewish refugees from the Nazi concentration camps. Even when you are persecuted for who you are and come to a place of safety, having escaped death for a while, you do not necessarily escape taxes. She worked for the Inland Revenue, but that did not mean she was not a good person.

The picture is deliberately fuzzy: up close but not quite in focus, symbolic of a love that has been changed by that other certainty in life other than taxes, death: hers a couple of years ago. Soon that rose will be diminished physically, withered and fallen. But it will still have a dignity and character that its early September glory reflects in the realm of the seen.