Spring

Whenever I buy flowers I vacillate between horror at their expense and astonishment at how beautiful they are.

Now that they have been in the flat for a few hours I have stopped wavering and settled down at wonder - and thinking about carnations & Oxford; irises and my great-aunt, whose name was Iris and who gave my mother a pair of iris-coloured marmalade jars (one of which now broken); of roses and Valentines past; of freesias wrapped in shredded paper, sent by my sister and still in their buds - too delicate to show to anyone, I hid them away until they bloomed, like a conservative parent, only, successful; heather and summers in Scotland, and hybrid flowers, and my grandmother, who bred hybrid rhododendrons and how is now wasting away, forgetting, deep in Switzerland.

I wonder how long they will last.