Day 337 & 338- The Red Garden

Day 337

10th June 2012

I worked through the Sunday after our 7th meeting as if in a trance, so intoxicated I was by the prettiness of the rampant rambler rose and the poetry of the weaving vines. I painted my roses in an array of subtle reds, from tea rose to champagne rouge, peaches and cream to bashful. I don't think I have ever loved pink as much as I did that day.

Despite their humble beginnings, the flowers' insidious invasion was inevitable. Soon, the conquest of that corner of the junkyard was almost complete and it became impossible to tell where these spilling blooms originated. Are they moving out or coming in? Was the door open to welcome or to bid goodbye? 

Like the landscape artist I can dream of being only in my miniature world, I deftly planted some beetroot bull's blood onto a bed of tiny stones the colour of raspberry sherbet. The combination was divine, not unlike the tenderest beef cubes stewed in Cabernet Sauvignon.

Stew! I felt the hunger pangs then and saw that the evening shadows had fallen. I told myself, the day is done, I shall stop now.

Day 338   

16th June 2012

The 8th Saturday arrived with me still obsessed with all plants red. So I started that day with  making an unusual berry plant using some scaly hulls I found while running at an ancient Japanese cemetery; a burial ground  that seemed more like a Zen garden.

More painting ensued when I cultivated the tiniest baby's breath into crimson wild flowers and sprinkled them across my field of green. A bunch of spagnum moss was soaked in a cup of   primary red acrylics in preparation for my own version of a cherry tree.

While waiting for the spagnum to dry, I painted some more so that little purple plums hung off the mossy tyres I created for a playground  meant for all creatures small and wonderful. As if there were not enough red already, I planted clusters of Amanita muscaria, the quintessential toadstools that I thought only existed in the world of gnomes and fairies until I found out otherwise from my dollhouse friends.

Then more  wild roses,

and more and more and more,

this time with stems and thorns and vines that seemed to go on forever.

It was way after Teedee had left with his mama that 2 mulberry trees sprouted. There was the shorter, wider one at the playground;

placed there because the branches looked as if they were bursting with cotton candies.  Hanging from the same branches were also drapes of nature's ribbons for dancing and merry making.I could almost hear singing , 

Here we go  around the mulberry bush; early in the morning... 

 The tall burgundy one was planted just next to the car just so we could celebrate the freak of nature where 2 different plants might bear the same fruits or rejoice in the harmony of different or heck, jubilate just for the sake of jubilation and for no other reasons whatsoever. Happy for happy sake.

And where was Nat during this whole time?

Around but not near enough and with his 1st love, not me. They were inseparable, my iPad and him. I did find this picture of me though which must have been taken by Nat at a time when he needed space from his love.

And when I yelled for him , he would come running, alone, and asked yes, tata ah yee?

And then disappear before I could give any meaningful answer, as if he couldn't bear to be away from his love even though it was just long enough for me to accusingly whine you no longer care about the junkyard and for him to reply of course I do! But I design you build, right? 

Right. See that shadow? That's him always lurking, directing, telling me what he thinks even when he is not with me.

8th Saturday, 16th June 2012