a hundred years, for Virginia Woolf

1.

A hundred years ago today, she was thinking about Mrs. Dalloway, which had sold 1070 copies. (“Doing surprising well,” she wrote.) I have just come in from the upper deck where the dog roses are coming into bloom, this one fully out, sweet-smelling. I never planted it. Well, I guess I did: I planted a rugosa, “Alba”, perhaps 35 years ago, and it didn’t last long, but its rootstock took over, climbed up the side of the house to join the wisteria on the railings. Brief seasons, though there will be a few wisteria flowers later in the summer, and in autumn, the dog rose canes will droop with long elegant red hips. (“I have had high praise,” she said, after Mrs. Hardy wrote to tell her that Thomas was reading The Common Reader with great pleasure.) When I bent to smell this open flower, I thought of Mrs. Dalloway, buying the flowers herself.

2.

A hundred years ago. Two weeks later, she said, “I think it is possible that we may sell 2000.”

3.

I wrote a novella in homage to Mrs. D. but–you can imagine.

4.

“The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.” Do I need to say more?

5.

I have been trying to wrangle my garden into order. Each year it becomes more impossible because how do I weed out the self-sown columbine, the spreading Japanese anemones, how do I grow things in rows? Short answer: I don’t. And live, or don’t, with the consequences.

6.

“Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall.”

7.

Some mornings it is hard to imagine what comes next. The manuscripts out in the mail, the long days that fill up with digging, weeding, carrying compost to laggards who might not deserve it. Some mornings we still make a fire, though it is nearly summer. And today will be Day 12 of my lake swims.

8.

The days pass. Or accumulate. It depends.

9.

I think a real gardener wouldn’t let a thorny climber take over the side of her house, not when it only blooms for such a short time. But this morning I bent to smell the open flower, so sweet I wiped a few tears away, quickly (tears for a simple flower?), and it meant everything.

10.

“All the same, that one day should follow another; Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; that one should wake up in the morning; see the sky; walk in the park; meet Hugh Whitbread; then suddenly in came Peter; then these roses; it was enough. After that, how unbelievable death was!-that it must end; and no one in the whole world would know how she had loved it all; how, every instant . . .”