Fruiting

I have been sick. The year has passed and I thought I would be passed grieving, but it appears that this is not so. For the past week, I have been unable to work, or think, or even feel - exhaustion has pressed into every part of my mind and body. I am heart-sick and weary. Yet, I have taken some harvest from the garden - the strawberries have been as sweet as the summer sun, and the potatoes are flavourful and comforting. Now the courgette flowers (those which have escaped slug damage!) are bursting with outrageous colour. I caught one unfurling in the evening - it had taken on a strange, other-wordly glow as it caught the light of the setting sun within its transparent petals.

I found these lines from Marvell's 'The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Fawn' (1681)

'I have a garden of my own,

But so with roses overgrown,

And lilies, that you would it guess

To be a little wilderness'......

'Had it lived long, it would have been

Lilies without, roses within.'

For the moment, all my harvest seems as blighted and withered as a nuclear winter, but I remain hopeful for the 'roses within'.