Gardens

Gardens

Today, Wendy was up way before me, ready to go on her journey to Oban and Mull with Sharon and Clare; her new ‘sisters’.

I had had a strange sleep; full of dreams, sometimes interrupted by the sound of the rain on the window, sometimes interrupted by Dash shifting on the bed, and later on by him barking to get out of the room. Finally, bleary, half asleep I let the sound of the shipping news wash over me at dawn and hoped the next few hours remaining in bed would be the bliss they sometimes are nowadays. And they were! I can’t remember the dreams I had in those remaining early hours. I know the dog went for a run with some friends who were bicycling; I know someone was painting some drift wood by a shack on a beach and that Wendy was there but did not look like Wendy and that somehow my Dad was there too.

I love having my dreams even when I do not like them. I love telling people about them and yet also know that some people will groan and say

“Not again!”

As soon as Wendy left the house, I went up to my room; got into bed and listened to the final moments of Saturday Morning Live on the radio. I am not sure how pleased I am that everyone now speaks about mental ill health and abuse and trauma. I think I am very pleased; maybe slightly jealous in a very silly way that they are so heard and accepted when speaking out forty years ago, it seemed a bit more risky and slightly less glamorous to have had an awful time.

I was so tempted to sleep but before going to Glenarn Gardens I went to Ardmore Point with Dash. The thick tall grasses in the fields were being cut, sending off such a rich fragrance. Away on the hills, the sky was full of rain, and out into the firth, the waves were ragged with the wind. The vegetation is so tall and abundant just now; so many flowers and bees, so many birds. I really love this. I am not one of those who says they prefer winter. I like the long, long, days; the birdsong, the scent of summer, the thought of days off and holidays.

I arrived before anyone else at Glenarn. I have been there often but today was a Jeans Bothy Photography day.

My life has been so busy recently. I am meant to do twenty two hours a week at work but over the last four weeks I have somehow managed to pile up forty five extra hours that I won’t get back. It might explain that constant tension and tiredness I feel; my readiness to assume people dislike me or would like to harm me. The fact that, despite the tiredness, I don’t sleep well and spend evenings not communicating; just staring at my phone; drinking too much whisky.

Foxgloves line the drive before the gardens; their purples and pale pinks, the dots inside the tunnels of the flowers that the bees love to crawl up. I Iike this.

There is not much I want to say about that brief interlude in the day despite titling this piece ‘Gardens’. Our tiny group meandered; chattering, pointing out things, taking pictures. We would pause by a stream, peer at some of the remaining rhododendron flowers. Look at the blue of the Himalayan poppies, the smooth reddish bark of some of the trees. Dash weed on many bushes and wanted to play with Jess who looked like she couldn’t be bothered with him. There were specks of rain, and branches and flowers and grasses swaying in the wind. There was clematis that smelt of chocolate and in the woods with the moss; that clean, deep, watery smell of the forest and leaves and mud. I liked hanging round at the back or venturing off at the front of our group. I was very happy indeed but didn’t really want to speak much. Instead I wanted to see the light coming through the, leaves, look up the trunks of trees, feel the earth under my feet.

We met the owner who seemed like a kind person. We saw the sky turn dark with cloud and then light up bright as the sun came out in the gaps. We sat on benches. Dash kicked up leaves and dirt after each one of his wees.

Now I am home. I did my shopping, did not tidy the house though I need to before my visitors come tomorrow, instead I watched an old film: Local Hero. It is strange how we can wince at some of the attitudes we must have taken for granted just scant years ago.

I am back in bed, by the way. Dash is sleeping. Wendy will probably be drinking prosecco on a ferry weaving between islands. I’ll give myself an hour and then go down to make soup for tomorrow, do that tidying, phone my mum and hopefully end up in bed very, very, early!

(Photos: Ardmore and Glenarn Gardens; June 2022)