Top- Rosa 'Abraham Darby - Left R. 'Shropshire Lad'  & R. 'Ebb Tide' 25 November 2021

‘Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety’

Act 2, Scene 2 of Antony and Cleopatra.

Today November 25 these were the last roses of the season in my Kitsilano garden. I waited to see if any of these three buds would open. Only the dark wined coloured Rosa ‘Ebb Tide’ managed to open almost.

It is sad to see the last of the flowers and roses to open in the garden and what remains for me to do is to rake all the fallen leaves from the deck and remove as many of the black-spot rose leaves that have fallen in the pots.

With December just about here, and Christmas, which celebrates the birth of the God Child there is always hope in the air of a better year before us. And esperanza (a much nicer sounding word in Spanish for hope) of these three roses and many of my other 40 that they will bloom for me in 2022.

My Rosemary prepared, with my dubious help, the 2020 garden for 2021 and now, I must learn to do it all by myself for next year.

Today is US Thanksgiving which is going through an inevitable reconsideration. For me it is easier to simply give my thanks with the lovely and short Latin Deo Gratias which has been translated to Thanks be to God.  And then there is this complex (to me) poem about Thanksgiving by Emily Dickinson:

 One day is there of the series

Termed "Thanksgiving Day"

Celebrated part at table

Part in memory -

Neither Ancestor nor Urchin

I review the Play -

Seems it to my Hooded thinking

Reflex Holiday

Had There been no sharp subtraction

From the early Sum -

Not an acre or a Caption

Where was once a Room

Not a mention whose small Pebble

Wrinkled any Sea,

Unto such, were such Assembly,

'Twere "Thanksgiving day" -