Day Seven: Ten Days of Persian Influence

ISFAHAN

The new moon rose in a cloudless sky at Isfahan on the evening before we set out. We sat in the garden watching Venus and the slip of moon travel together between two tall poplars, in a silence broken only by the croaking of frogs and the distant cries coming from the town.....

So we sat rather sulkily in the garden watching  Venus and the new moon. The month was April, the evening air warm and milky. It had been raining; the smell of the wet earth came up to us as it so often does in England, but so rarely in Persia. Little gold and purple irises grew all along the path, on the edges of the irrigation stream.

 "Twelve days in Persia"

Vita Sackville-West

1928