Charles Dickens on the Wall

This wall belongs to a lovely old building in the neighborhood - in fact, my favorite building even though it is kind of too late to discover it. We saw it while roaming through the Leathermarket Gardens Saturday afternoon and couldn't help but envy whoever is living in it with a view overlooking flowering treetops of the gardens. 

As we circled around and looked up we found these lines of texts, seemingly words from a poem, floating on one of the side walls, old, gritty, of the building. I was clueless as to the origin of the text. I took a photo and a bit googling back home quickly led to the answer: it is an excerpt from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens.

There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast. Some men, like bats or owls, have better eyes for the darkness than for the light. We, who have no such optical powers, are better pleased to take our last parting look at the visionary companion of many solitary hours, when the brief sunshine of the world is blazing full upon them. 

Indeed when "the brief sunshine of the world is blazing full" in this city, one easily stops lamenting about the wet, cold rains, the wintry gusts, and anything so capable of bringing us down. 

所谓的落英缤纷，我想像中的样子就是这样的。可惜错过它们绚烂的时刻

开满红花的大树，近看，花很象杜鹃花，但杜鹃的植株应该不可能这么高大。

令人羡慕的顶层公寓。