Summer Flowers, Roses, Herbs

That word, "roses," brings most pleasant thoughts. Sweet tints around, sweet odours in the air, from where they cluster on the garden walls, or climb high up to casements at cosy houses well shut in by trees and cool green leafage; where softest, richest, daintiest of blooms are gathered by fond fingers tenderly-blossoms that, as you think of them, recal to mind their sisters in the woods whose paler petals fall where song-birds sing. That thought brings foxglove-bells and wild-rose hedges, wild vetch and briony, wild hop and bearbine; and grass knee-high and ankle-deep in flowers, and bees and butterflies and unfolding ferns; the sound of mowers and the smell of hay, and all those country scenes that month is full of. The thymy hills and golden gorsy commons, the charm of sunlight when we are in the shade, the hum of insect-life, the boom of bees, the listless lying under leafy boughs, with half-closed book or quite-neglected paper, till roused by bleatings where the shearers are, or noise of timber-haulers in the woods. Such thoughts are July thoughts, and are all most pleasant ones

Source: The Illustrated London News, July 1, 1882, p.19

Summer: Roses