The Cottage Garden

If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need

Marcus Tullius Cicero

If you are going to live by a river, make friends with the crocodile

Indian Proverb

There's music in the sighing of a reed.
There's music in the gushingof a rill.
There's music in all things, if men had ears.
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.

Lord Byron

Bluebells

Men stopped giving her flowers.

In her garden, frosted and dried,

the winter plants were a lifetime's

spent bouquets.

She needed to give herself a present.

A bathroom with no mirrors,

white towels to wallow in,

a tub deep enough for remembering.

She had to find the perfect blue,

not iris, not midnight,

the sky's watchfulness

two minutes before dark.

In the paint shop

the young man listened carefully "

mixed lilac, cobalt, amethyst,

a practised conjuror.

They saw it spin into colour,

or he did, she watched

the blackness of his hair.

No grey, he must be half her age.

His eyes when he noticed her

were a quick green sea change.

I can tell he said, when you dream,

you dream of bluebells

Kate Rhodes