When I look back at old photos, I sometimes find myself thinking, 'How lovely I was!' And all my friends too. It's probably just youth. I tend to see that bloom and grace in most young people... but there's something different with us, those of us now older: you see those pictures and know the future. The coming wrinkles and sags, the greyness or receding hairlines, and a different vulnerability in the eyes.
The eyes of the young have the vulnerability of hope and of the raw immediacy of the harms they've suffered or that they fear. For older folk, hope has this desperate quality. Joy is bittersweet. There's a hint of the beaten-downness of aging.
My tree peony's blooms last just a week, perhaps less. They are sudden - from bud to bloom in a matter of hours at seems - and then so soon blowsy and fragile. The petals are tissue soft and fragile. But that brilliance of colour. That emphatic size and showiness. They give it their all for just a few days.
This year the plant has spread, leggy and luxuriantly-leaved, into all the available space. Seeking sun under the acer - which is also in lustrous spirits - and the lilac. How lovely it is.
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