A Winter Garden

I didn't think much of August. On a personal level, I had three sessions at the dentist for a root canal and I had to wrestle the tax return into shape. The world was a miserable succession of bad news, ranging from a loved actor's suicide to Ebola. And winter took on a vicious kick, finally dumping rain everywhere except where the farmers really need it.
The best thing about August was a book. "The Daughters of Mars'" by the Australian novelist Tom Keneally, is a brilliant re-telling of the 1914-18 War as experienced by the women who worked as nurses. Such a big, grand book, wide in its compass of history and geography, compassionate in its understanding of human suffering. Read it, it's wonderful.

You would hope the lessons of the past might be useful to a new generation. But no, we pursue the same old dramas, maybe learning a little as we go. What can we do as we are bombarded with reports of war, carnage and atrocity?
We can rest in the peace of small reminders.
As though unable to wait for the first week of spring, the very first Peace rose has bloomed in my winter garden. Already the plump bud droops, as though unable to bear for long the weight of such an opulent flower. Unfolding soft lemony petals, fluted with crimson, it is as lovely as morning dawning on a fine new day.