So Sweet

From my garden I can hear the church bells from Badingham, Framlingham and Bruisyard. These churches are all on much lower ground than my relative hill-top position, and the sound carries up. I just point my ear and I know from whence it haileth. They get you like that, the church bells, make you go all biblical. I was in that other theological construct, heaven, last night when I went to see Der Rosenkavalier. Renee Fleming and Elīna Garanča were singing the roles for the last time which made the performance all the more poignant, in an opera whose chief characteristics are poignancy and nostalgia. Their singing, along with that of soprano Erin Morley, was pure, soaring, beautiful, painful, sweet as nectar. It was my fourth DR, though I used to play the CD a lot, and I've never enjoyed it so much. Time seemed to slow down as they sang their long duets, every note, every phrase sublime. They were singing their hearts out because that's what they do, but those two in particular knew they wouldn't get to perform Strauss's masterpiece again. The final trio, the piece of music that millions of people want played at their funeral along with the Four Last Songs and Dido's Lament, was less the icing on the cake, more the icing on the icing. My sense of amazement at and gratitude for the glorious power of music and the effect it can create remains undiminished, I'm very glad to say.

I have sniffing rights to Sarah's garden across the lane, that is when she has something ravishingly scented draped over one of her trellises I am allowed to lose myself in it without permission. But when Hugo and I sauntered down the lane under a beating sun a bit earlier, it was a couple of lilac heads hanging from her hedge that caught my attention. I buried my nose in them and breathed in deeply, so deeply I nearly swooned. Lilac, my number one absolute all-time favourite garden shrub. Mine has been in the ground for two years now, it's even put out a baby, but still no flowers. They'll come, I know that. Soil too rich or something. But in the meantime when the scent from Sarah's two monsters is not coming this way I can seek it out whenever the need takes me and indulge myself. For now, though, I broke off that dangling branch and the scent is filling my kitchen with sweetness. Mmmmmmmmm.