Symmetrical flower and leaf mandala sketch

You will think me mad for writing, when we spoke every Sunday for thirty years over the hedge, but the rose came up again in the old quarry field, the one your father swore had been dug out in 1911. Five petals, pale as milk, and the centre so dotted with gold I had to kneel with the spectacles on to be sure. I counted the leaves twice. Eleven on the left and eleven on the right, as if someone had laid them out with a compass. I did not pick a single one, though Tom Pardoe says the hips make a fine syrup and I should not be so fussy.

The buds are what worry me. They have come up around the stem in pairs, small and round as peppercorns, and each one sits exactly where a bird would perch if it had any sense. I sat with them for an hour on Tuesday and nothing moved, not a wren, not a fly. Then the wind got under the leaves and every one of them turned at once, the same way, like a congregation standing.

I have put a jam jar of water by the back door in case you come down. Bring your magnifying glass and that terrible hat. I want you to see the spine of the stem, the way it runs straight down into the earth without a single crook, and tell me I have not gone soft in the head.

Yours in haste, and in the dark of the evenings, Edith