Red roses in November - walking with the Muse

These week on the south coast of England we were blessed with a fabulous sunny and mild day.  In the afternoon I went to a local historic house and enjoyed a walk in its arboretum and garden. 

What has this got to do with writing? Well, walking is a form of moving meditation, and the regular rhythm of putting one foot in front of the other is good for letting my mind wander and opening-up to the messages of my subconscious.

Which is exactly what happened as I walked through the Well Garden.  There were still a few roses blooming, defiant big white double flowers at the end of bedraggled-looking branches.  My first thought was that is was the 19th of November, and far too late for roses.  They should have shut down for winter weeks ago.

And that was when the Muse struck.  I got the idea to change the colour of the flowers to red, and to use the symbolism of red to link them to blood.  The idea of blood led me on to a character clinging onto life, but threatened with death.  And then the opening of a story leapt into my mind:

 

  "A last few blood-red roses were still blooming in The Patriarch's garden.  They - and I - were both clinging onto life.  But unlike the roses that would drop when the first, late, frost arrived, I had no intention of dying.

  The Patriarch expected me to.   He was, after all, the person who'd ordered me poisoned.  But I wasn't going to let him win this battle between us."

I have no dea where this fragment of story is going right now, but it's intriguing enough for me to type it up and add it to my ideas file.

Thank you, Muses, for your gift of this idea.  I'm always open to such quiet promptings, often when I'm walking by the shore.  But walking among trees helps my imagination too.  I wonder who lived there in last ages, or what powers the trees might have on other worlds.  After all, my stories are built on the consciousness and ideas of a thousand generations of storytellers.