24. Why Poets Should Be
The Plant by my deskrambling here there and everywhere, I wrote out a list of things to do after the uncouth business men’s lesson of English. (I mentioned I gave English lessons to business men on Sunday mornings in entries 4 and 28).
This is the list: floors, vegetables, plants, frame, fire, and I did them all in that order starting with the sweeping brush, mop and bucket (I have ceramic tile floors- a blessing with 5 cats and 3 dogs coming and going as they please). I then went to the vegetable patch and cut some chicory and plucked up an ice-berg lettuce, threw all under the fountain and rinsed them four times, put them in a tea-towel and hung them up to dry.
I have a lovely umbrella shaped ficus plant standing besides my writing desk which spreads its arms along the edge as if caressing the mahogany wood while the small heart shape leaves hang like green raindrops on its slender branches. But since of late it has been losing leaves, reminding me of an aging woman’s falling hair, I read somewhere or other that even in winter, when plants are usually at rest, they need to be fertilized to give them strength to maintain its leaves, so that was chore number 3 and while I was at it I gave some of that stuff to my dwarf pine trees and a remarkable plant that crawls all over the 30 yards or so of my boundary wall and has the semblance of ivy but loses its leaves in winter and changes colour with the seasons, from various shades of green to yellow, orange, red and brown.
Next on my list was “frame” which meant I had to find a frame for one of my paintings as a customer would come to pick it up later. The painting was that of a country road with three r
ows of trees, hills in the background and pink, heather like bushes in the foreground.
The last thing on my list was the fire… Even though the sun is brilliant, it is a cold October sun and I have to light a fire in the late afternoon, so the cinders from yesterday had to be cleared before setting up the paper and sticks to light another one. I then sat down in a deck chair outside and the sun was not only brilliant, but in the early afternoon, it is warm too.
After lunch, here in Italy everything seems to stop and as I sat there I could feel the deathly silence
This is the list: floors, vegetables, plants, frame, fire, and I did them all in that order starting with the sweeping brush, mop and bucket (I have ceramic tile floors- a blessing with 5 cats and 3 dogs coming and going as they please). I then went to the vegetable patch and cut some chicory and plucked up an ice-berg lettuce, threw all under the fountain and rinsed them four times, put them in a tea-towel and hung them up to dry.
I have a lovely umbrella shaped ficus plant standing besides my writing desk which spreads its arms along the edge as if caressing the mahogany wood while the small heart shape leaves hang like green raindrops on its slender branches. But since of late it has been losing leaves, reminding me of an aging woman’s falling hair, I read somewhere or other that even in winter, when plants are usually at rest, they need to be fertilized to give them strength to maintain its leaves, so that was chore number 3 and while I was at it I gave some of that stuff to my dwarf pine trees and a remarkable plant that crawls all over the 30 yards or so of my boundary wall and has the semblance of ivy but loses its leaves in winter and changes colour with the seasons, from various shades of green to yellow, orange, red and brown.
Next on my list was “frame” which meant I had to find a frame for one of my paintings as a customer would come to pick it up later. The painting was that of a country road with three r
ows of trees, hills in the background and pink, heather like bushes in the foreground.The last thing on my list was the fire… Even though the sun is brilliant, it is a cold October sun and I have to light a fire in the late afternoon, so the cinders from yesterday had to be cleared before setting up the paper and sticks to light another one. I then sat down in a deck chair outside and the sun was not only brilliant, but in the early afternoon, it is warm too.
After lunch, here in Italy everything seems to stop and as I sat there I could feel the deathly silence
surrounding me- even the cats were silent as their stealthy paws crept beside me, one on my shoulder rummaging through my perm, the others on my lap soaking in the sun. The oasis of silence, the comfort of purring, the utter indulgence of resting had to be recorded- If I had been a poet, I would have painted that moment in words- but I’m only a writer- blogging around.
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