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As I went out to Pick Flowers
By Maeve Edwards
As I went out to pick flowers this morning
I had to shade my eyes from the sunlight, so rare this summer
And the butterflies had found our new butterfly bush
And the peapods had formed under my very nose, the flowers falling when I had looked the other way.
Of course I had to stop and taste; my teeth crunching into their flesh. Too many to go uncollected so I retraced my steps to the house for a basin when I was struck by the way the clover had lushy and lavishly covered the raw and scarred bits of the grass and believe it or not I had passed over the cream and pink clover heads without noticing. Now I stooped and picked one pink petal and sucked its tiny end, its honeyed sweetness reminding me of days in Mount Prospect bee catching all day in the park.
And lo, there was one, no two, no three, four, even more, bumble bees busily collecting nectar and flitting from clover head to clover head. I bent to examine one bee, so rare we thought as children that it was a bloodsucker, with its furry body and red tipped tail.
The red robin that has been visiting us all summer, landed on the side of the new green wheelbarrow so filled to the brim with rainwater from our wet summer it reminded me that the Japanese Acer, this year so strong and filled with russet red leaves, needed a good feed if it was to remain bonsai like in its pot. So I made my way to the greenhouse for the watering can, and was struck with how high the basil had got and I remembered the small glass jars I had sterilising in the kitchen waiting to be filled with Pesto. Another day would be too late, for the stems were already beginning to break into flower.
A scissors was needed to cut off the leaves and I passed over the clover woven bee laden lawn and got sidetracked by the most glorious overflowing flower pot of nasturtiums all pale and deep orange tumbling out of their pot like a young girl’s plaited hair. I bent and picked up an armful to settle them more comfortably, so tangled up were they in my climbing geranium, and underneath a veritable scurry of insects, woodlice and slow moving beetles moved in alarm from my fixings.
A beetle escaped and scurried off to disappear behind a dandelion taking root in the cobble lock. Images of helicopter colonising ginny joes sent me rushing to the shed for my weeder. Back over my lush clover lawn, my feet growing accustomed to the swooshing sound through its richness but, diverting to the kitchen for the shed key, I saw the washing machine had finished its wash. So taking out the clothes newly sent from India and placing them in the green basin, I travelled back over the grass to the clothes horse and as I hung C’s stripey cotton top on the line, I thought of a poem I might write later to send to him!
Scent of India
A large white pillowcase of a parcel
Arrived in the post,
Sewn roughly but securely down one side
My name scrawled legibly
With black marker
On the front,
The sender’s name in smaller script
On the back,
All the way from
Kerala, India.
I took a scissors,
Careful not to cut the fabric
As if it was a precious cloth
And not rough hewn cotton
Which had travelled
Half way across the world
Gathered dust of other countries,
Sat in cold holds
Of aeroplanes and
bowels of boats,
Skimmed across water
Safely arrived in Bray
Sliced open on my table.
Your clothes tightly packed inside
Flattened and pressed
As if laundered
Socks
Rolled tightly in balls
A stripey kaftan
moss green jeans.
To my dying day
I will say I did not miss you
No sure why would I
When you are far flung in India
Hand drawn postcards
Arrived bringing us
pictures of chaos
Cochin,
with bells
Bicycles and bethrothed boys
and emails from shabby
smoke filled internet cafes
told of
Bus rides
To musky cities
Houseboats
In crimson twilights
Air heavy with heat
Kerala, Mumparala, Bangalore.
I took your folded kaftan
and held it against my face
And deeply breathed in
To catch the scent of you in India
And found
to my surprise
my cheeks wet
To my dying day
I will say I did not miss you
No sure why would I
When you are far flung in India
I unfolded the clothes line
Scent of tears and India
and you
Dry damply on the line
Of an Irish summer
With the clothes horse set up near the fence, I hear a gentle thud. The unmistakeable sound this summer of our Gala apple tree offering us its daily gift of one bright red apple. It drops safely and soundly into the soft layer of grass cuttings placed in a circle underneath, as this wayward tree cares not a whit for where its apples fall, and we find them under bushes and bounced half way across the drive like eggs left by thoughtless hens hiding them where none would find them.
I smile out loud at how we had thwarted its attempts to far fling its offspring and bend to pick up the apple. But my eyes were drawn by the new raspberry canes only recently planted which, in their attempt to settle in, have grown a new cluster of raspberries out of season. I ease one from its creamy stem, so delicate is it, and pop it right into my mouth (not a thought for anyone else). There will never be enough for jam. Not ever! Perhaps the blackcurrants will provide it, so I peer into the green gloom of its leaves and find half a dozen small blueblack fruit which follow the raspberries down my throat.
But look, the honeysuckle has wormed its way through the fence and is taking off into a neighbour’s garden, so I eased it back through the gaps in the fence and went to the shed to get something to pin it with. Back over through the clover, sidestepping the diligent bees, when goodness, how had I not noticed before, the fennel had bloomed presenting me with waist high umbrellas of lime green flowers. I retreated to the house to get a scissors and, just in time, saw the brown bread was ready to come out of the oven. Not a moment too soon, as the sounds of movement upstairs told me A & K were being beckoned from sleep by fingers of aromatic baking bread wisping underneath their closed bedroom door. I tipped out the bread onto a baking tray.
Then, realising I had got nothing done all morning, I hurried out to the garden to pick flowers.
Maeve Edwards August 2007
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