Into the Woods

The abbey’s camélias have have reached above the roof line. It’s time for pruning, I think.

The bee was working the camélias at 42 degrees F.

And yes, when I think of camélias I always think of La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas the younger, which, before my French started getting rusty, I read in French along with the elder Dumas’ Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. Compared with his father’s work, the younger Dumas’ writing reads like juvenilia. Yet the story is strangely compelling and hauntingly moody. Giuseppe Verdi turned the story into an opera — La Traviata.