The Good Assurance of Red Roses

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, writing in the voice of his “greatest detective” character, Sherlock Holmes, presented a tribute to this magnificent natural beauty (read below the photo).

During a brief lull in a criminal investigation (“The Adventure of the Naval Treaty”), Sherlock Holmes took a moment to smell a red rose. The flower, he remarked to his friend Dr, Watson, clearly was evidence of divine beneficence. “Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers,” proclaimed the world’s greatest detective. “All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and colour are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again we have much to hope from the flowers.”

The roses in the photo will assure goodness at our table this weekend.

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