The roses bloomed.
I had brought them back to life.

For years believing myself to have black thumb.  I never dared care for flora.  The heart-felt grief in the mere thought of experiencing life recoil from me, was too much of a challenge and I never tempted fate.
I saw myself as inept, unworthy. Who am I but a city girl?
What do I know about the art of gardening?
It is this belief that had lead me to shy away from caring for flora.
Despite, or perhaps because of my utter adoration for nature, I did not ever believe myself to be up to the job.
So I had resigned myself to a passive role… that of admirer.

And yet recently, without the crowding voices in my head, without the distraction of malevolent jealousy, I found I had a great need inside me.
Like a stirring in the pit of my stomach.

When I arrived here at the dead house, my roses were but woody skeletons.  There were echoes of a season past; leaves and shrivelled flower-heads.  But where once must have been emerald and ruby, now was only brown and grey.
They camouflaged well against the dryness of the walls.  The stony carcass, the haunted shell.

The dead house.

For which I mourn.  For which I writhe and tie myself in knots.  The house I have loved since I was a girl.  And my earliest memory was of entering the park through the grand irons gates, which opened automatically.  The drive through the tree-lined alley leading to the front steps, where carved stone goddesses greeted us, and I believed I had arrived in Narnia.

The house of fairy tales.
The house of fun.
The house of grief and sorrow.
The house I love

Today I stand before my beautiful roses. All crimson velvet, sensual and lush. Their perfect appearance always accompanied by the wounding thorn.
The sharp tendrils only add to the beauty of these plants, as they embody all that is love; desire, nurture and pain.
No wonder the little prince accepted death gladly to be returned to his rose.

And Like the roses, my dead house is a reflection of perfect love – seductive and lethal.

But in my dreams, she lives forever.