Different details

And memories they evoke

It is not yet 5am and I am awake. Sleep seems to have packed a bag and abandoned me despite me crawling into bed that night so exhausted that it felt like a welcome friend, a soothing comfort as my eyes started to close. Suddenly in the early hours of the morning every unprocessed thought was demanding my attention and no matter how much self soothing I did, I couldn’t find peace. I pretend for so long and then admit defeat. I was at that point where you are close enough to when you would normally wake that trying to get back to sleep seems pointless. I get up and try and think of how to use my time, so here I am tap tapping away, reflecting on the weekend.

The weekend seemed to be one of words that caught my ear and I hope hold memories for later days. Saturday I meet a friend in the botanical gardens with our cameras, something which I have not done in a long time. It felt good to play, to talk and to feel the warmth of late spring sun on my skin. ‘How did we not see this last year” my friend calls out and I wonder how this is so. Is it timing or plants growing at different rates due to seasonal variations or is it visiting on a different day. Perhaps it is us that is different a year on, we are no doubt molded and shaped slightly different to when we stood here last year, even if we aren’t aware of it. For what ever reason we saw either with the same eyes different things or different eyes the same things.

“Is that rose named peace?”, she asked “yes” I replied knowing that when I picked and put it in a vase now sitting on the dinning table that she most would likely make such an inquiry. She immediately inhaled it’s wonderful fragrance as I did when I picked it. I thought how magical flowers can be that they evoke a quiet simple joy. That a name and a scent could take us both to different places, different memories in this simple act of acknowledging a flower. Her thoughts of what that rose meant to her are different to mine yet somehow we are connected by her inquiry of the name.

“Oh hello you”, I said to myself as I gardened. Woken early by a dog whose internal alarm clock is 6am no matter what the day of the week it is, I found myself in the garden by 8 tackling the number of plants purchased and seedlings who had survived my rather hardcore hardening process. I decided that everything was getting planted today and I was determined to do so. I do think that one of my favourite things about gardening is that even if you are weeding or planting, you see different things that you may miss as you walk past during your day. I love spying the newly flowered, the little lady bug that saw me rush to get my camera or seeing small stories as plants grow and tangle together. My garden is a tapestry and I am so happy that it is filling in.