coming up roses

red rambling roses, electricity pylon, blue sky
 
When wondering what to put as the post title to accompany this photo, I did a quick search for quotations about roses and came across this, attributed to J M Barrie:

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

I also found this by George Herbert:

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, a box where sweets compacted lie.

That would have been a lovely quote for this morning, when I took the picture, but we’re now in the middle of a torrential storm, with thunder and lightning and a minor gale blowing.

Something tells me those roses won’t look so lovely tomorrow, so perhaps God gave me memory so I might have roses on San Isidro.

(In fact my comments about the weather are no longer accurate at the time of posting – the storm took out the internet connection, so I’m posting this a bit later when it’s abated a bit and ‘normal service’ seems to have been resumed.)

sunshine yellow

It’s been hot as summer for the last few days, but there are storms in the offing for the weekend, so, as I’ve been too busy to write, I’ll post a couple of sunny pictures to brighten the page:

yellow broom flowers

a spattering of free-range broom in egg-yolk yellow speckles the hillside
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“an even better blog”

Checking my blog comments, I found this in the spam file:

Quotation: I couldn’t have asked for an even better blog. You’re available to supply excellent advice, going directly to the point for simple understanding of your subscribers...

It clearly is spam, but I wondered how many people had received something similar and let it be published.

So I googled the phrase “I couldn’t have asked for an even better blog” and wasn’t really surprised when the search returned over a million hits.
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colour me simple

Gredos mountains, province of Ávila

In Welsh, the colour word glas is frequently coupled with mountains and hills – think of all those places, roads, B&Bs, schools etc, called Bryn Glas – but in other contexts it’s probably best translated as ‘blue’ rather than green. Of course, looking at the mountains in the photo – which is much prettier if you click on it to see it full size – that makes some kind of sense. (Not that they are Welsh mountains; it’s the Sierra de Gredos seen from the south.)
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more school memories

Yesterday I said that one of my school teachers seemed to believe that pleasure taken in the sound and general impression of poetry was more important than the ability to understand and explain the details of each word and image. Forty years later, I am very glad that was her attitude.

poetry books on a shelf

Another memory from that time at school was the context – or, more accurately, lack of context – for the poetry we were studying.
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