(no subject)

[smokingboot]

So I cleaned the kitchen, and tidied the front room, and wrote a little, and mowed the grass in the back garden. I planted some foxgloves and some bluebells, and a bush of bright white ox-eye daisies. Another will join it tomorrow.

In the front room, the table is decked out in white and green. A glass jug painted with white star-like flowers and green stems is full of clean water, on a lily pad place mat at the centre of the table. Behind it is a photo he took of a stone Pan, I decorated the frame with a tiny daffodil head, some thyme, some rosemary with its flowers - this is the first year in three my rosemary has flowered. Next to that is a small chunk of stone he brought me from Asia Minor. He labelled it for me: Altar Fragment Temple of Aphrodite 534 BC.

There's a photo of a tiger on one side, of a wolf on the other. Another jug sits nearby, this time full of dark green stems like reeds, white flowers and deep blue irises beginning to open. It has a painted fern on it, and a wee frog with bulging eyes staring up at the stems. It makes me laugh.

larians very kindly sat up with me last night and we toasted my old friend Rick, with champagne and rasberries and grapes, good bread and cheese, sausage sandwiches and chicken wings and an eclair. He was a lover of the good things, a lover of life itself.

I am not sad, though I am eating too much. But I want the house to be clean and full of flowers and fresh herbs, clear water, life. I want to work in the garden before I get my nails done tomorrow, and I have work type work to do as well; can't avoid it. Plus my writing.

I'm weary, but the house begins to look better than it has for a while.

Comments

[hybridartifacts.livejournal.com]

No-that still sounds idyllic to me. I actually prefer gardens to be a bit iffy and full of creepy crawlies-I like the complexity. Overly manicured show piece gardens dont do anything for me unless they are filled with ancient statues and perhaps a hedge maze or grotto.
I am one of those people who think backwards to everyone else-when they go to a prominent natural beauty spot they look out at the expected vistas and relax-meanwhile I look in the other direction and hope for something incredibly detailed-maybe some twists of insanely uncultivated grass around some curious rusting object that lost its identity years ago, or a lazy lizard on a wall that is suprised someone actually turned round and noticed it there for a change.
Froggies and butterflies reminds me of a childhood spent wandering in all sorts of quasi-urban brownfield sites that no sane child should play in (way too dangerous) looking for grass snakes and ponds filled with newts.

Nature is, in my opinion, her own best gardener, and her more animated denzins are visiting you thats a good sign. Outside our window we have a strip of grass we are not supposed to walk on, a hedge and a tree. If we are lucky we get to watch the squirrels-but to me its not a real garden and we cant really sit in it and let the world go by since its really just there to make the flats look nice.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Our garden needs more complexity; when we first moved in, I promised the Green Man he could have one corner and I wouldn't do anything unless it needed a thorough spanking! Well, it often encroaches but has more verve and life to it than the rest of the garden, including a brilliant hidey place for hedge-hoggery! I should just let the green guy take over...