Stay at Home Order … day 2 plus 14 seclusion retreat days
Weeds grow before my gate
And my sleeves are wet with dew,
No one calls on me,
My tears are solitary–alas!
The Sarashina Diary (AD 1009-1059)
Cited: Diaries of Court Ladies of Old Japan
“There should have been roses
Of the large, pale yellow ones.
And they should hang in abundant clusters over the garden-wall, scattering their tender leaves carelessly down into the wagon-tracks on the road: a distinguished glimmer of all the exuberant wealth of flowers within.
And they should have the delicate, fleeting fragrance of roses, which cannot be seized and is like that of unknown fruits of which the senses tell legends in their dreams.
Or should they have been red, the roses?
Perhaps.
They might be of the small, round, hardy roses, and they would have to hang down in slender twining branches with smooth leaves, red and fresh, and like a salutation or a kiss thrown to the wanderer, who is walking, tired and dusty, in the middle of the road, glad that he now is only half a mile from Rome.
Of what may he be thinking? What may be his life?”
Cited: Project Gutenberg’s Mogens and Other Stories, by Jens Peter Jacobsen
a meditative journey 
A most beautiful quote, Brenda. I read it out loud as if I was reading it to someone, but it was only me.
Alone within my home, I heard a knocking at the gate…the wind greeting’s
Calming on all counts. Wonderful.