Summer roses

These are Perle d'Or, Whisky and Princess Margarethe, with jasmine. Somehow the scent of jasmine seems to accentuate the scent of the roses and vice-versa.
  Having strange weather here, very humid and cloudy, but without rain, which we really need. I don't like humidity, it makes me feel as if I am ill and feverish, bathed in sweat at the slightest exertion; I prefer dry cold or dry heat. Not much we can do about it though. Tomorrow there is a street party, down at the nearby park - it will probably rain then!
  Reading George Eliot's first published work, the compilation of three novellas known collectively as 'Scenes of clerical life". I'm quite enjoying the stories. Also reading a book called "The adventures of Henry Thoreau" by Michael Sims, a biographical work which looks at what Henry did before he went to live at Walden Pond and wrote his famous book. He was an oddball, no doubt about it, and many of his non-Transcendentalist neighbours thought him mighty peculiar. Today he'd be diagnosed as autistic or with Asperger's syndrome no doubt, and have his brilliant peculiarity medicated away. 
    It seems that each age has a puritanism particular to itself;  witness the furore over Mr Cumberbatch's gaffe with 'coloured people' when he should have said 'people of colour'. So many things are now offensive to so many people, that we dare not say anything anymore, even if well-intentioned. Sigh.