The Writing on the Wall

[igenlode]

It's pretty heavy going, but I think I can probably safely say now that I've definitely started the oneshot story prompted by erimia about an alternative explanation for 'the initials RC' -- one scene complete, even if Raoul hasn't met the relevant dungeon yet :-)
(Well, two scenes, but the first one is only about a hundred words long and is a bit confused, as the protagonist is busy drowning at the time!)

And I've just set my bowl of Yottam Ottolenghi's elderflower and rose cordial to steep, having acquired a red rose and a mass of creamy elderflower heads from the cemetery. Not from a grave; from an old neglected bush that was growing up by the railway line with a load of hedge clippings dumped on top of it. There were some others peeping through the banks of brambles closer to the gate, and I suspect they are all relics of the Edwardians who laid the cemetery out. Unfortunately the red roses were not as strongly or sweetly scented as the white ones growing in profusion next to them, but it does have to be red for the colour. (I don't know what would happen if you used a white rose for flavour and something else for colouring!)

Conscience is a funny thing. I have absolutely no qualms about taking the elder flowers, which I know are regarded as weeds (though the trees looked magnificent standing in full bloom all around the boundaries), and somehow I feel that roses in formal beds being tended are municipal property, but abandoned roses belong to the community. But obviously it wouldn't do if everybody took them...

Comments

[watervole]

I feel really guilty about taking stuff from the wild, unless it's in really small quantities, but rose petals would cause me no pain, because birds don't need them.

[igenlode]

I have no scruples about elder flowers or berries, because like blackberries they're so copious, and because the vast majority of them grow far out of human reach -- I could take every spray of blossom from the few branches below head-height, and the rest of the tree would still be covered in it.

(In fact, come to think of it, elderberries don't seem to get eaten much; when picking them one has to take care not to select sprays where the berries have simply withered on the tree, rather than finding them already stripped by birds. A quick look on the Internet suggests that some people in the USA who grow them for fruit find that they need netting, while others report, like my own observations, that the fruit is more likely to drop off than get eaten.)

[watervole]

I guess elderflower is more common where you are. I feel guilt free about blackberries (like you) because there are loads of them round here.

[igenlode]

Very common. They're regarded as weeds -- but tree-sized weeds, even if they're relatively small trees, so the vast majority of the flowers/fruit are out of reach. It's like trying to pick crab apples.