What Dorothy can do

I stopped at the corner of Watling Street and the Whitefriars shopping centre to adjust my shopping, and looked up. There was Dorothy, more properly Rosa Dorothy Perkins, climbing up to the sun through a foxglove tree, Paulownia Tomentosa.

Summer is here!

Watling Street runs from Dover to Holyhead in North Wales under different names in places, but it’s an old Roman Road. There was a Carmelite monastery where Whitefriars now stands. St John Stone was a friar here.

Winter comes on Autumn’s Heels

Bitter For Sweet

Summer is gone with all its roses,
  Its sun and perfumes and sweet flowers,
  Its warm air and refreshing showers:
    And even Autumn closes.

 Yea, Autumn's chilly self is going,
  And winter comes which is yet colder;
  Each day the hoar-frost waxes bolder,
    And the last buds cease blowing.

From Goblin Market, The Prince’s Progress, and Other Poems by Christina Rossetti.

There were more frosts and more intense cold in Christina Rossetti’s time. Nevertheless, we have had the first hoar frost of this winter, those last dahlia buds look unlikely to flower; the tents along Canterbury High Street we hope are keeping people safe, and warmer than otherwise they would be, until the shelter opens next month.

SPRING QUIET by Christina Rossetti

Mile End Cemetery

Christina Rossetti lived mostly in London, when this cemetery was still in active use; it is about 5km from the centre of town. Nowadays the thorn bushes are white, the birds sing, the sun shines shadily, and people can wander around, hearing the sea in the swaying branches. And there are tower blocks in Kentish seaside towns as well as central London suburbs!

Gone were but the Winter,
Come were but the Spring,
I would go to a covert
Where the birds sing;

 Where in the white-thorn
Singeth a thrush,
And a robin sings
In the holly-bush.

 Full of fresh scents
Are the budding boughs,
Arching high over
A cool green house:

 Full of sweet scents,
And whispering air
Which sayeth softly:
"We spread no snare;

 "Here dwell in safety,
Here dwell alone,
With a clear stream
And a mossy stone.

 "Here the sun shineth
Most shadily;
Here is heard an echo
Of the far sea,
Though far off it be."