Darling Paid Pals,
I haven’t been able to get away to make more AWAY posts for you, so instead here is something a little different.
While sitting out in the garden a few days ago I realised that while I find it deeply tranquil it is in fact a space in perpetual motion.
Planting trees in the four ‘corners’ of the garden was - in part - intended to create a more interesting shade profile and boy did it deliver. The garden is walled, so that the majority of the space avoids the wind’s tickle, but the tops of the trees reach over the walls and fences and sway a perpetual waltz with the breeze.
But then - of course - the air is never still even within the walls of the garden and, along with the sparkling dapple of light through the trees, the leaves at ground level giggle incessantly, silly as school girls.
And then, the pollinators dart through the swaying stems of flowers, rolling their bodies in pollen, hastening from here to there. Bees are spoken of as moving drowsily through heavy summer air, but the pace here is frenetic - busy bees, bustling between blooms. Never languorous. Never for a moment forgetting their purpose.
A million other movements beyond human perception add to the motion of the garden. Microscopic but magnificent.
Instead of taking stills, I decided to take video. The result is five minutes of the garden in motion.
A friend told me recently that she likes to open these emails in the morning before dealing with the stress of the working day. I thought of her when I edited these clips together. It is not compelling. Nothing happens. No car chase, no fight scene. There is no audio (living under the Heathrow flight path does not offer the kind of relaxing soundtrack that one would wish).
To sit and watch, at 1x speed, is to meditate on the motion of the garden. And let that be the only sensory experience. A cloud passes over. Bella breathes deeply as she bakes in the sun. Something flies from one allium to another. A garden is never still, but is nonetheless peaceful.
