The perfect rose

Thirty pages left to do for the edits.
I wrote this story a year ago and
even that short space of time has made a difference to my writing.
I see the curious habits and cringe.
What is it that makes me use one word and use it again in the next sentence like an echo? Perhaps I should scan this blog and see if I do it here, too.
If I've taken one shot of the roses in my garden this summer I must have taken fifty, and I rarely get a shot that is sharp and clear. Too much wind, and defective eyesight has a part to play. With contacts in, I cannot see an object close to; with glasses I can, but I can see even better with my naked eye. At three feet, everything works the opposite way. Passing twenty-five is no fun as age starts to tell, at first in such tiny things as not being able to pass a thread through the suddenly fuzzy eye of the needle. With me it was buses - the wretched things were almost past by before I could read the direction or number. I got glasses and was amazed at the things I could see. Friends told me I'd regularly ignored them for ages unless they stood right in front of me. No wonder tennis players like Del Potro win the US Open Tennis at age twenty - everything is perfect. Strength is reaching its optimum, reaction time is superb, fitness and stamina at their best; the slowest part to mature is the brain, but after years of intense training, that knows what is expected on a tennis court. Eight years on and we're all wondering about Federer as he heads towards thirty. He is considered "old."
The US Open is going to change the APT rankings, I should think. I suspect Murray will slide down as suddenly as he rose. Will Nadal stick with number two again? And where will Del Potro find himself?