“What day is it?” he said to himself as he looked at the thermometer. Good enough day to turn off the heat and move into the garden.
It’s early winter ‘ proper’ now. Between five to ten degrees but surprisingly pleasant in which to work with the community of tree-ferns within the garden.
I’ve not been well and it’s great to be able to bend and stretch, shovel and dig...... and do it all again.
Apart from standing alone, tree-ferns will also decide to grow other tree-ferns from both the trunk and the base...... so after ten years, there can be three or four smaller plants which can be separated from the parent. This involves sawing down into the earth and lots of levering. Eventually - after an hour or so - you have another tree-fern looking for a space of its own.
I don’t know where my love for tree-ferns springs but it’s a two way empathy and they thrive here - a mile high in the mountains. Graceful, utterly beautiful and very slow growing, they’ve witnessed the Jurassic and are as tough as old barbarians.
I work through two days of mist and drizzle to create the garden bed and then enjoy the labour of the third day - moving tree-ferns, in a light rain, and then, spending the time, washing away the excess mud. I’ll add some daffodils and give the bed a coat of sugar cane mulch and then they’ll have the rest of winter to settle in.
The songwriter night has moved from weekly to monthly due to ... lack of public interest basically. I haven’t touched ‘music’ for days.
All my creative energy has moved from music to garden and I relish that all consuming passion...... do the task at hand and move on..... I have to grin to myself as I recognise that I used seventy seven of the ninety blocks that I bought, in oder to build the walls of the bed, and had to take fifty per cent of it apart to get the level right.
Our local community radio station, BLUFM, is running their annual ‘songwriter contest’ into which I’ve entered, as I’ve done in previous years, but - as my instinct is to ‘go quiet’ - I’m doing it without actually knowing if I’ve much to offer.
I’m not an ‘emerging talent’. My latest group of songs is done and is what it is. I don’t know that I’ve anything left to say so if I go quiet here you’ll understand why.
Off to the north coast shortly, for a week or so, of ...‘ now - for something completely different.’
..... meanwhile, back in the ‘other world’, .... it’s another story.