Just a rose

We are back from our travels in Italy, busy coping with all the post holiday chores.  I've finished uploading the shots taken over our week to Flickr - there were 192 of them in the end.  I think I need to edit myself a bit more harshly next time!

I took a couple of shots in our garden later on this evening after a rain shower.  In the end I've chosen this lovely rose - the muted colours are lovely.  

We did have a few coming out before we went, but they have really started to bloom now.  

There is something about roses blooming in May that never fails to remind me of my days as a student discovering Omar Khayyam for the first time and the message of mortality that the end of the Spring delivers to us:

"Each Morn a thousand Roses brings you say
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday"

Sometimes the easy answer that one should just enjoy the simple pleasures of life does not seem such a bad one:

"A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, 
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou 
Beside me singing in the Wilderness-- 
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow! "

But I always get twitchy sitting underneath that shady bough and come what may I know that I will still be striving for other answers tomorrow :-)