Roses around the Stone Well
The heavy rains of early summer have resulted in a thick blanket of creepers and vines draping every tree and bush with tropical intensity along the way between the city and our stone house upstate. I wonder if the obliterated trees will survive the onslaught.
I look out of the windows of the old stone house and I can almost feel the thickness of dense vegetation closing in, although early landscapers created views of wide swathes of fields bordered sparely by dark conifers and a variety of deciduous shades of green. The climbing roses on one side of the stone well are thriving. The other side refuses to climb. I have given up.
Trees close to the house frame house and flower-beds discreetly, without intruding. They stand benevolent guard, branches weighed down with decades of growth. Out on the front lawn, the giant maple that has been presiding over the house for over a century lost two significant branches in some recent storm which we did not experience. We mourned the evidence as the car pulled up at the head of the driveway. Nonetheless the huge maple still stands proudly, a spectacular sentinel, waiting for the winds of autumn to fill its arms with gold.
And now I see that the hollyhocks planted earlier this summer have grown to amazing heights, red and white flowers alternating with tightly clustered buds straining at their green sheaths to open in the sun. Like lanky girls at a ball, they sway and smile, dancing beautiful blossoms to the music of the breeze.
This old stone house has sheltered hopes and dreams, pain and loss for centuries. It withstands weather and age, waiting for us to escape our daily lives for a brief promise of peace. It waits for us to be restored. I am deeply grateful for its healing walls.
Standing at the window in the kitchen with the view of the pond in the distance, I dream and drift, and that is all. And that is enough.
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I look out of the windows of the old stone house and I can almost feel the thickness of dense vegetation closing in, although early landscapers created views of wide swathes of fields bordered sparely by dark conifers and a variety of deciduous shades of green. The climbing roses on one side of the stone well are thriving. The other side refuses to climb. I have given up.
Trees close to the house frame house and flower-beds discreetly, without intruding. They stand benevolent guard, branches weighed down with decades of growth. Out on the front lawn, the giant maple that has been presiding over the house for over a century lost two significant branches in some recent storm which we did not experience. We mourned the evidence as the car pulled up at the head of the driveway. Nonetheless the huge maple still stands proudly, a spectacular sentinel, waiting for the winds of autumn to fill its arms with gold.
And now I see that the hollyhocks planted earlier this summer have grown to amazing heights, red and white flowers alternating with tightly clustered buds straining at their green sheaths to open in the sun. Like lanky girls at a ball, they sway and smile, dancing beautiful blossoms to the music of the breeze.
This old stone house has sheltered hopes and dreams, pain and loss for centuries. It withstands weather and age, waiting for us to escape our daily lives for a brief promise of peace. It waits for us to be restored. I am deeply grateful for its healing walls.
Standing at the window in the kitchen with the view of the pond in the distance, I dream and drift, and that is all. And that is enough.
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