the blue muse

It is quiet this morning, still. Cloudy, with the possibility of thunderstorms. We need the rain, but it is hard to give up the sunshine. I am up early and the day stretches before me with promises.

I should take photos, my garden is dripping with blooms, roses everywhere, lupines, peonies, clematis, all posing their best pose and calling my name.
All wishing to be stars.

This rose in my photo, a rugosa rose, is not so showy, it is happy to stay in the background and fill my garden with its scent. Oh, that scent. The scent that all other roses aspire to. I want to cut them and put vases all over my house, but they don’t enjoy being cut flowers, no long stems, they don’t last very long in a vase. And the thorns, oh my, they are the thorniest, these roses are not for coddling, not for primping, not for the tender-hearted.

There is rain in the air, I can smell it. The humidity clings to my skin, sticky, everything is sticky. Now, this early in the morning, it feels comforting. Later, when it is too hot to bear, it will be stifling. But still, we need the rain.

I could go for a thunderstorm. This afternoon I will be here, alone, husband and son going to do guy things, golf, camp out, rough it. I could curl up in a chair and listen to the rumble of thunder as I read one of my picked-out-for-summer books. Oh, how I would love to curl up in a chair and do just that.

You would think that winter would be the best time for reading, stuck inside so much of the time. But for me, summer and reading have always gone together, I spent most of my childhood summers doing just that. There were lots of kids on our street, lots of opportunities for play. But I was always the one on the porch, nose buried in a book, oblivious to the world around me. Oh, how I wish I had a porch, just now, today.

If it stays nice and doesn’t rain, I will sit in my garden. The birds will sing, and I will be there, but somewhere else. Someplace that exists only between two covers. I’ve spent so much of my life there, in those pages, gone so many places, loved so many characters, laughed and cried and lived so many lives that I never could have imagined. All while sitting in a chair.

A rose by any other name is, indeed, still a rose.

A book by any other name… well that is a different story.