About changes, big and small.

 

I saw this some weeks ago. It entered my dreams. I thought of it whilst driving. Eating. Brushing my teeth. I think this change needs to be big, bigger than a new hairstyle. The obvious thing to me is travel. That means next year. A New Year's Resolution. But as my dear friend pointed out from far-off Tennessee - why not get a headstart and make it December 1? Small changes are good too and they always lead me somewhere interesting.

My first day off in many. All my friends are working. The grass at the bottom of the garden needs cutting, but after watering, the bamboo copse is filled with chattering Cape White-eyes, so it doesn't get done.

 

Through neglect, the mustard greens are going to seed. The flowers add zing to my lunchtime sandwich. It would have been so easy to stay in my pajamas and not go out today. But my Calvinist upbringing dictates otherwise and I go to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens for a few hours.

A fragment of poetry by Ian McCullum, part of the Untamed Exhibition. Your animal heart. I like the sound of that. Sculpture and maquettes by Dylan Lewis.

And then - what I actually came to see: The Living Wall. It's a cage-like metal structure, filled with plants in plastic bottles. The colours change as you walk the curve. I love it.

Walking with bare arms in this garden is sheer bliss. The bushes buzz and whirr with bees and ladybugs. Frogs croak in the ponds. Guinea fowl and Egyptian geese compete. 

 

Home again, my fingers still smell like peppermint geranium. A glass of white wine, feet in the water. Back to work tomorrow.