Much to Hope from the Flowers

(Wild Roses, Rick Hansen)

Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are all really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.

Sherlock Holmes, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

The rose’s smell and color are presumably useful to its pollinators, but it’s still a lovely thought. Roses and “Moonlight Sonata” go a long way.

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About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.
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