A Wall of Color Far Above Our Heads

   Last Saturday, as I was doing my taxes I glanced out my kitchen door and gasped at the sight of my Rhododendron bush, well, not bush, more like a tree. My gasp was a remembering the words from one of my favorite Gothic romances "Rebecca" by Daphne DuMaurier. 

"a wall of colour, blood-red, reaching far above our heads. We were among the rhododendrons. There was something bewildering, even shocking, about the suddeness of their discovery. The woods had not prepared me for them. they startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic, unlike any rhododendron plant I had seen before". Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier (pages 71 and 72)

   The tree with it's red was a symbol of the dead Mrs. DeWinter, who was a mystery to the main character. Coming from the desert, I never knew what a Rhododendron plant looked like but I certainly know now, and even though my tree is not "blood red" I still marvel at my good fortune to know what the scene from my favorite book looked like.