Thursday, May 08, 2008

Sigh



The weather is balmy, the sun comforting after a cold spring. The sky is brochure-blue. In my garden, last week’s rain and this week’s sunshine combine to send sap shooting through the plants. There’s a visible difference from one day to the next: clumps are sprouting like teenage lads, all legs and elbows. The earth smells damp and warm. The birds are taking their young ones for test flights and teaching them to twitter. The cats watch with interest, basking in the sun.

Standing on the grass – which is lush again even though it was cut only last weekend – I can almost feel the roots creeping through the ground beneath my feet, almost see the stealthy burgeoning all around. I sense that if I turned round quickly I’d catch plants growing: stems stretching, buds plumping busily up, leaves uncurling their fingers, flowers colouring and opening. And weeds boldly rampaging too: their seeds splitting and their little roots and shoots wiggling their weasly ways through the flowerbeds, tangling with the roots of the legitimate occupants of the garden.

Or at any rate I would feel all this, see all this, smell and hear all this if I weren’t composing these words in a stuffy classroom while my unfortunate students practise essay-writing for their exam next week.

21 comments:

  1. Wow! You (and Mr Life?) have done a great job with your garden...and I can see the reward it gives to your efforts at this time of the year. Is it warm enough yet that you can sit out in the garden for a cup of tea and enjoy the fruits of your labour?

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  2. Wow! As a teacher, I give you an A+ because your description brings your garden to life - literally.

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  3. It is very evident that you have spent time in your garden, by the sheer fact that you have conjured it up so convincingly to yourself and to us.

    How nice that you can both carry that place around in your head and send it flying around the world, as you have.

    After your last post I went out into my garden and found six freesia leaves, so I may have a small fragment of my old garden show its face next spring.

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  4. Big sigh. I was transported by your garden prose and then brought back to earth with a bump withthe classroom too! It is Friday, Isabelle! Thank heavens.

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  5. Beautiful post, Isabelle. And I sympathise: the highlight of my week so far was being allocated a courtroom with an actual window. Woo hoo! Hold me back!

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  6. Lovely. I miss my parents' garden in Edinburgh!

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  7. Sigh...I enlarged the photo, but couldn't find the catlets basking in the sun. Can we have another photo please? Topsy is so black she is almost blue-black in the sun. One of our previous black cats used to look kind of rusty brown-black in the sun.

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  8. You're so funny Isabelle. I was right there with you in that beautiful growing garden and then I suffered whiplash when you snatched me back into reality! You do have a way with words -- what a writer you are!

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  9. Excellent use of stuffy classroom time! I could almost hear the grass growing....

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  10. Lovely commentary on spring's stealthy arrival. And that teenage lad analogy is just perfect - see how some turn into thugs and elbow out the delicate aesthetes...

    Hope you can enjoy your garden at the weekend.

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  11. You're not the only one who sometimes blogs while their students are working on something. When you're up tp date with correction, what else is there to do?

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  12. Just caught up with your last three posts. Lovely. Yes, the small details are so important, especially when one is busy. And thankyou for the lovely garden pics, especially the stellata - I adore them.

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  13. I love it when your garden comes to life because your photos of your blooms are always so lovely. We have a few green poking through the ground but I'm too busy with my daughter's wedding to have taken a good look.

    Happy Mother's Day to a great mother.
    Joni

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  14. You've taken me back a few years to interminable spring days in high school. Outside, blossoms were popping out and birds were singing. Life was happening! Inside, even the air molecules were so stultified that they couldn't move. It felt as though the bell would never ring to let us out.

    I'm amused to hear that teachers experience this phenomenon too.

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  15. Such a lovely garden. So very different to what your son will be seeing in Rotorua!

    Loved the plants growing- I could hear them too.
    Shame about the classroom, though.

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  16. You're in the season where everything grows at an accelerated speed and everything needs doing at once.

    Defintely not enough hours in your day, especially when you have to spend several of them in a stuffy classroom.

    Thank goodness for weekends and long twilight evenings - something we don't have over here, long twilight evenings, that is; we do have weekends....lol.

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  17. I always love reading posts about your garden, and they always seem to have the most pretty pictures! My garden is growing like that, too, quick and full of weeds to cut out, LOL! Except that mine isn't quite that pretty ... it's a veggie garden!

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  18. Well you certainly need no help with your essay writing, what a wonderful post that perfectly captures the feeling of Spring that is around us at the moment
    Kimx
    PS Thanks for pointing out that my linen dresses would need ironing. But then if I lived in a world of floating doves permanently attached to my hand and spent my days in white linen dresses I would expect the woodland creatures to do the ironing!

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  19. Yes, tis the season...for weeds! Argh! I swear that last week there were no weeds in my front flower bed and now? There are at least 10 prickly thistles that are growing strong.

    I read the comment you left on my blog...I only wish I had the excuse of being a stay-at-home mom (for my obsessive thoughts). I work full time as the head of the youth services department in a public library. I think part of the problem is that my job isn't nearly as fulfilling as it was 10 years ago.

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  20. You get an A+ from me for this for this excellent essay Ms. Isabelle! :)
    Oh, just now reading the comments I see Leslie has given you an A+ as well.
    I love the teenage lad analogy.
    I remember our Andrew sprouting at age 13. He'd outgrow his sneakers in 6 weeks. A very expensive time!
    Isn't spring wonderful?

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