GEILSTON WITH JEAN’S BOTHY
I am sitting in the sun with a breeze and the green, green, gauze of summer under the pergola at Geilston Gardens . I have always wanted to write here and just now that is what I am doing. Occasionally I hear the voice of people in the gardens; fleetingly the glimpse of a woman walking along besides the burn in a bright skirt.
Moments ago I was lying in the walled gardens; my head on the grass, feeling its warmth, smelling the loam of the earth, watching the swallows flitting in the blue sky above and vaguely listening to the sound of the wind in the trees and the voices of people I am slowly, almost beginning to call my friends.
One person was reading a poem in which the itch and prick of brambles was mentioned. It shocked me out of my blissful doze of a garden scene to that other summer evening when wee Charlotte charged into the house screaming after she had stepped on a wasp’s nest while out brambling. I remember an evening of creams and occasional tears and trembles as she and her mum recovered from the dozens of vicious wasp stings on their legs and stomachs and hands.
It made me think my small comment of how we need buzzing bees today, to remind us of the sheer bliss of a weekend day doing almost nothing at all. But then last night and this morning and the night before, when I went out to the decking I kept on seeing a long thin solitary wasp with, I think a long tail, buzzing in the joists at the top of our gazebo. I think it might be some sort of ichimon wasp and the way it lives reminds me of Charlottes wasp’s nest and the swallows intent on gobbling insects above us and yet, despite that different reality, I am absorbed in the murmur of content this day has brought to me.
I do not need that reality at the moment; instead I seek the bliss of half heard words and laughter; the slight trickle of the burn. Soft wind and the smell of the grass, the prickle of that grass on my cheeks. The knowledge that there are many people here who have come to make a beautiful moment amongst the scent of flowers. The brightness of those flowers, the green glow of the leaves in the sunshine and the columns of gnats above the water.
My heart is soft, my breath smooth, my thoughts only half there. Here I begin to think that belonging; that connection and harmony are really a possibility we could all fall into despite me only becoming aware of it when I am amongst the slow drone of the bees and the slipping to and fro of the swifts and the swallows and the martins.
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