on a hot summer day’s end (word picture)

I sit on the terrace. It’s been sweltering and humid all day. I’ve kept the doors and windows closed so it would stay nice and cool inside the house.

Now the sun has disappeared behind the hill, although the sky is still high and blue and hazy clouded. It’s cooled down some after a five-minute-summer-rain. My skin feels sticky.

I drink endless glasses of water. I feel restless. I wish the flies would let me be.

Snatches of poetry run through my head. Words that adequately describe the feelings of sitting on the terrace on the evening of a hot summer’s day, watching the swallows dip and weave, listening to the blackbirds singing, feeling flies settling on my sweaty skin and wishing for something to happen. I cannot remember the poems, nor the poets, only flashes of their work.

The red-pink roses look good against the clouds gathering on the horizon. The goldfish in the pond move lazily just below the surface. There is no wind down here, although the clouds are moving closer fast enough.

I love this place, and yet I’m restless. Will I ever be satisfied with what I’ve got?

I hope the swallows will be able to stuff themselves tonight. I like swallows. I don’t like flies.

A plane cuts its way through the sky, sunlight glittering on its silver skin. It hums along in eager pursuit of a different place to be. The swallows stay put, close to their nests, even though they zip through the sky on their fast wings. The goldfish don’t zip. They just drift.

The edges of the clouds are white, tinged with a rose-golden hue. I hope the swallows and the planes appreciate how pretty they are.

 

 

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everyday beauty

I didn’t do anything productive, useful or necessary all day today. I did take some photos though and they made me smile. They are a perfect example of the fact that there is beauty everywhere all around, if only you look closely enough.

roses

Roses – who can refuse them? I love all flowers (and taking photos of them), but this post is about roses. Because there is something quintessentially beautiful about them. Even their shape is beautiful.

And the way they seem to have more petals than is possible – there are just layers and layers and layers of velvety petals.

That smell… When they open up and you put your face close to them, there is that sweet, wild smell of hot summer and beauty, of longing and soft touches, of humidity and adventure.

And they grow in such an abundance. Reckless numbers of budding roses climb all over each other, each growing more beautiful than the other.

What do you call a group of roses? A bunch? A pride? A cluster? A flock of roses?

Whatever the correct term is, it’s an honour and a joy to have them growing like this in the garden.

this afternoon (word picture)

I’m sitting in the reading nook at the back of the garden, on a comfortable chair, my laptop on a small table in front of me, feet propped up on a stool, right below an orange cloth that is fashioned tent-like above the wrought-iron structure that shades this corner. The Moroccan lamp dangles down from the highest point and isn’t lit because it’s bright afternoon.

Outside my shady tent my youngest sister lies on the soft green grass of the garden, reading a book and tanning in her bikini, while dragonflies zip through the air around her. Birds chirp and sing and sometimes the far-away humming sound of a plane can be heard, as it cuts its way across the pale blue sky and the wisps of clouds up there. Playful gusts of wind tease the branches of the roses that have climbed over the arched garden gate and flutter my tented roof.

On the terrace, separated from the grassy garden by a stone bridge over an artificial little brook that runs around two sides of the garden, with little ponds in between, is the terrace, where my father naps in the sun, and my mother reads on a reclining chair in the shade. The dog moves from shade to sun, from sun to shade, and cannot decide if one is too hot or the other too cool. Whenever one of the big black flies, or bumblebees, or dragonflies or bees come too close to him, he jumps up and snaps at them, trying to catch them, but he never succeeds.

All around, trees are softly waving their branches, blue and purple and yellow and white and pink and red flowers are nodding their heads in the breeze, and on the pond, pink and white waterlilies have opened their petals and float serenely on the glittering surface.

It is a long weekend in early summer, and I’m so very happy to be where I am.