Day 364-365- Housing The Homeless

I am no gardener but somehow I know.

This is where my unwanted plants belong. 

I knew I had to do as much as I could in that 1 week between Christmas and New Year before I had to surrender myself once again to the relentless demands we call Life. So for everyday in that week, I took my basket of gardening implements and pots of homeless, dying flowers to the abandoned house and started digging, trimming, watering, feeding.

I didn't have to plan.
 The House told me what to do. 

It said: Look at the sunrise orange flower on the decorated front door. This is where the once dying roses shall adorn.

Then it directed: After you are done with the blazing roses, go to the wall of the broken window. This is your next canvas. Use the faded murals to start composing and bring life back to my once glorious vases. You must not stop until you have painstakingly re-created my still life with the wild flowers. 

Thus I worked, day, night, then day again, then night and in the wee hours of one morning, just as I plucked and planted what I thought was the last stalk before my rest, the house called my name.

My dear Sans, you must sow the seeds for a curtain of vines before noon; a curtain heavy enough to protect my art from the harsh sunlight yet sheer enough not to obstruct its view  from afar. 

Don't forget the colours, the whisper continued, I want them for compare and contrast.

I tried, I really did but my mind was in a sleep-deprived stupor and my eyes were already half closed. 

That was when I felt my hands left me, as if in a dream and I saw how the House took complete control of them. They moved deftly, through the painted vines on the rickety spindle posts and planted, plucked and placed. They knew that the peach flowers should grow where the single carved flower was and they knew where the lilac patch should be. 

When dawn broke, I woke and saw that the curtain was sewn. 

Thick enough for a shade, 
sheer enough for a view. 

I was exhausted and reluctantly I left but not before I carelessly sprinkled the contents from an old, neglected packet of seeds along the edge of the house.