I’ve enjoyed a lovely afternoon with one of my Lakeland neighbours today – a good catch-up generally, and a sharing of our love for gardens and sunlight illuminating flower and leaf particularly. Buds still tight on my beloved acer tree have, in the last 24 hours, opened into fresh and beautiful leaf, and as for the blossoms and flowers in my friend’s garden … they’re spellbinding! The first and the last photos here were made in my garden. The others, in his.
I can’t remember quite when, but it was only a little while ago that a bit of research led me to the discovery that the word ‘petrichor’ speaks of the wonderful scent that delights us after heavy rain meets soil after a long period of dry weather.
My bare hands have been working in the soil of raised beds until past dusk this evening and – in the liminal spaces that are a happy feature of light gardening – I’ve been aware of three things:
Of petrichor. The soil, loosened, raked and weeded, albeit in the absence of heavy rain, released a quite lovely scent – a touch of coal tar, perhaps a drop of creosote? – something, anyway, that smelled different, healthy, and unusual. I was glad of it.
Of a robin. How is it that robins appear to be talking to us when we set about even minimal works in a garden? This one’s little head cocked from side to side, his tail rocking up and down. He looked thoroughly interested and I don’t quite know how that can be so – how his little face is so expressive. I am glad of it, too.
Of bacteria. Especially of that particular bacteria that soil apparently nurtures – which, I learned last week, when coming into contact with bare human hands, releases dopamine in them. Here, in part, is what makes us happy when we’re pottering about in gardens – along with a wide sky, the scent of the lawn, apple blossoms, green shoots, the gradual stilling of post-dusk birdsong, and yes, the scent of the glad, the perfume – on such an evening – of the gratefully content.
not to produce some thing but just to acknowledge the good in painting
the brush moves without urgency and colours touch listening paper
and my listening and that of paper and brush colour memory
and in the quiet something of silence settles deeper than colour
Before colour becomes form, before brush becomes movement, there is a moment of stillness where everything listens. And in that stillness, and in that listening, in mere wisp of movement, in the slightest glance into light – a gently persistent voice invites me to attend to ‘something … deeper than colour’
sunshine and fresh air are great motivators for spring cleaning and art
By late Sunday afternoon I felt the contented tiredness of used window-cleaning muscles, the companionship of a colourful and imaginary friend working in the garden with me, coffee and crayons, and the mental satisfaction of some seasonal jobs now accomplished.
I lay down in the yard and prepared to let go and then came a call
I was recently much moved by an account of ‘Myrrh,’ an old working horse, exhausted, lying down, surrendering, one might say, to dying. And then came the tender voice of the rescuer, followed quickly by the safety and joy of green pasture, in company with other horses, who appeared to have regained lost youth. And I am moved by innumerable other exhaustions, and by the deaths of beloved sons and daughters, young people, drafted to work and to fight wars they had no part in causing. And now the sun rises over Easter morning, and I am mindful of another exhaustion, another surrender, another dying, another rising – and hear the call – as clearly as did Easter’s first loving witness – to be another voice …
and so I will rise wheresoever I am to speak a Word of love
What we need is here Wendell Berry – from The Wild Geese
A meditation on presence, play, and the scent of red leather
A wonderfully pale blue sky has framed Dumfries and Galloway in the last couple of days. Warm sunshine, together with the provision of a lovely ‘mindfulness bench,’ just big enough for two people, and overlooking the pond and Dalbeattie Burn at Colliston Park, made it an absolute pleasure to spend a couple of happy hours in this 9.5 acre park playing with my younger daughter and grandchildren. Yes, we shared some mindfulness, and – as is quite often the case after a time of stillness – the light scent of my daughter’s red leather jacket lingers with me now. My teenage grandson spoke of being willing enough, but needing practice at writing 1000 word essays, and of enjoyment in working with his hands. His younger sister ‘took us’ all – by way of an imaginary tractor, to Kirkcudbright – 42 miles away, ‘for fish and chips,’ returning just in time for (actual) donuts from Dalbeattie bakery before we went our separate ways. Flowers, sunshine, sky, running burn, meditation, conversation, warm scent, dreamscape and donuts …
.
It is a serious thing / just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in the broken world Mary Oliver – from Invitation
Look at the sky. That’s enough – Rainer Maria Rilke
we write in dusk what morning might understand …
… he’d penned thus far. The sky now very pale blue, and crossed by pink floss, he’d wondered – ‘is that a satellite, or a star?’
And in the way of such things, stillness descended as it often does when the answer doesn’t really matter, nor whether satellite-or-star is near or far.
And from time to time, amid the gentle reverie, he became aware of illuminated windows, some with orange glow, one a string of white fairy light, to the right a flickering quadrant, and several with the kind of log-fire-warmth one sees mid-winter through the steamed-up panes of an Edinburgh bar.
Fleetingly he wondered whether any behind those windows were ever aware of his being at his window – from over there, from just beyond entirely clear focus, afar.
And then, on Thursday morning, aware of windows having featured in his deeply restful dreams, he found a small sage green envelope had been pushed under his door. There was a thoughtfulness about the sort of chosen stationery, with the slightest trace of scent about it, for special sorts of notes – he’d seen once or twice before. And – with quiet delight – he’s contemplated the content of that note now, for a week or two, or more:
To the one over there who watched the sky when I did, thank you for being a quiet lantern in the dusk. We never spoke, but your stillness reached me – and towards the end of a frenetic day it mattered, and quietened me, more than I can say
Sometimes he was mildly aware of an angel at his shoulder. Tonight, in a quiet light, he heard her whisper
You looked at the sky like it was enough
It was
..
Sometimes we meet ourselves in the gaze of another, across silence
There are moments when the soul touches the world, and the world gently touches back
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes – Marcel Proust
