Saturday afternoon - I wish you could smell all the gorgeous flavours of our avocado crostini lunch in the garden - the basil and warm tomato and the triangular stemmed wild garlic I found at the allotment - imagining we were on a hot terrace in an old walled Italian village....
I wish you could smell the peppery nutmeg aroma of the honeysuckle abandoning itself in a tangle on the fence, scenting the whole garden, a perfume magnet drawing me out of the kitchen on Saturday night.
The last of the apple blossom on the lawn and the daisies before I cut them.... and the ring of bluebells fading now.
Hot puse pink allium pompoms by the back door. I bought them as a gift for a friend but ended up keeping them when our supper was cancelled....
It's hot, hot, hot on Sunday and we walk and picnic at the National Trust's Lydford Gorge on the edge of Dartmoor.
I wish you could smell this massed wild garlic blossom which scented our steep walk down the wooded valley to the river below us.
I wish you could hear the rush of this waterfall called White Lady, and the squeals of delight of the little girl splashing in the shallow pool below it with her parents keeping a watchful eye.
I fell in love with this tranquil green river as we followed its meandering path along the rocky bottom of the valley.
And looking down on the boiling Devil's Cauldron..... it reminded me of another giant white water - bigger and louder - The Devils Cataract at the Victoria Falls in Zambia where you can't avoid being soaked by the exploding spray.
Back at the top of the gorge we find a bench in the field next to the tea rooms and tuck into our boiled egg and humus picnic, but it's not till we finish that I look up and gasp at the beauty of
this bell blossom tree which we have been sitting under all along,
but because the wind keeps blowing the branches I can't get a close up of the flowers in focus.
At home the sun still pours into the kitchen and I notice another orchid flower has unfurled in the heat - it continues to amaze me that in spite of my total neglect and ignorance of how to take care of the three plants I own, they still produce such perfection from their dead looking tangle of roots.
Today the sun keeps away. It rains on and off and the weekend feels like another country. But what is staying with me is a conversation I had with my husband in the car driving to Lydford about the allotment and how he feels about it - his despair and de-motivation - listening to him in a different way - in the way I learnt in the Conflict Resolution course - listening with the intention to understand, to empathise - listening with love.....instead of the way I listen sometimes which isn't listening at all really - when it's disguised as attack and making wrong.... with the intention to somehow get my own way....
Like being in the dead end swirl of the Devil's Cauldron instead of in the peaceful flow of the green green river....
No comments:
Post a Comment