Spring

Spring and Autumn are when my lovely city is at its best. The sun is low in the sky, and the days are still and clear without being hot, so it always feels like it's 9 o'clock in the morning. Providing the winter has done it's part, Spring arrives as clearly defined as the hard edged morning shadows: last week, it was winter, but it's definitely not anymore.

Every morning now she makes us coffee and takes me out to show me what is happening. I stand on the lawn and look back towards the vegetable garden. Here? Here is where we live? My God! How did this happen? I never did anything to deserve this.

We're even managing to grow orchids, outside, and by "we" I mean "Clemency".

The Latin names go in one ear and get lost somewhere before they get a chance to go out the other. But the colours stick.

The trilliums are special, or so I am reliably informed. But I prefer the audacious blues and yellows of the annuals and the bulbs.

"Take a photo?" she asks. "Please?" I try to oblige. I look as close as I can. There is a battered Red Admiral filching a last supper of nectar from a camelia. Bees move swiftly, on sugar highs. Tiny plants do their plantly thing in the shadows.

I look at the yellow arrow by our door, a marker from the Camino de Santiago. "Go this way," it whispers. Every step is simultaneously a farewell and a greeting. Nothing is permanent. Be here. Be now.

Comments

Kate said…

Ah. Yes.
I love the IrisArrow.
But your words of its association more. Be.

14 September 2018 at 21:55

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