Wednesday 20th January: Gerberas - what dreams are made on?

I've always adored gerberas, and it's good to know that, after seven years together, him indoors knows that they're the flowers to get me, should he have the urge to be soppy and ridiculous.

So it was that I came home from work yesterday and these were on the table. You see, on Tuesday night I had a HIDEOUS dream that left me disturbed for the whole day. I managed to bore people at work about it, and even myself by the end of the day, so to see these when I walked in brought a smile to my face.

For that is what they are - sunshine on a stick. There can not be another more vibrant, charismatic flower on earth, and how they develop such rich colour is staggering. I'm not one for pastels, or anything that pretends to be a colour, like mint green or champagne white, how on earth can you be when there are colours such as these in the world?

A dream is but a temporary illusion, these flowers are tangible and very much alive in front of me as I sit and write this. So I'm going to put the dream behind me and focus on the flowers and ...

... and yet, I can hear my argument unravel when I think of Prospero, for aren't we, and indeed the flowers around us, "such stuff as dreams are made on"?

Why is it that you spend a few years learning Shakespeare not ever imagining you will ever remember any of it, and certainly not using it as a counter to your own argument?

Damn him, he really wasn't supposed to come into this when I started to write my blog for the day.

I leave you with Prospero's pontification, while I will try and work out how a post about gerberas, all colour and joy, became a post about the fleeting and cursory world we live in ...

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158