Seasonal Stone

Stone flushed with Autumn colour.

I’m collecting these hips, there are lots.  It is a wild rose, it grew from seed (delivered by a bird, by the wind, on animal fur?) on a path leading to my stone store shed, and which makes me stoop and squeeze sideways every time I go past.  It was so beautifully profuse with flowers this summer that I allow it to spike me occasionally and I staked one of the more wayward runners out of the way.  It was encouraged and ran up into the branches of the old sycamore tree and looked so beautiful.

Now the tangly stems of my rose are heavy with hips.  Gathering them I recall filling my school blazer pockets full so I could open them up during lessons and put the ‘itching powder’ down the necks of classmates.  Do you remember doing this?

Now I’m collecting them to dry so I can make rosehip tea.  (Though I admit to a certain delight in the idea of taking a pinch of those irritating hairs and making someone wriggle and scratch!).