SOS 2/7/22
Hurrah, I made it to SoS with pics of our main garden on the coast as opposed to the tiny little Matchbox in the city!
Hurrah, I made it to SoS with pics of our main garden on the coast as opposed to the tiny little Matchbox in the city!
“I went down in the afternoon
to the sea
which held me, until I grew easy…” Mary Oliver
Today was one of those days that reminded me of what the coast is – a summer’s day which releases special memories that go back 70 years.
The morning began with heat that seared the face and bare feet and the drawn out click and hum of crickets in the underbrush. I walked my dog along the beach and he dragged, not really interested in smells, just swims – his seriously wiry coat not what a dog would want to wear when the temperature was up to 32 degrees by 10.30. But the sea was as blue as the sky – they joined at some nebulous floating horizon. It’s the same whenever it’s hot – everything shimmers.
It’s madness in the cities on this little island. Madness, I tell you. People driving like crazed loons, minds anywhere but on the road, crowds in the supermarkets and stores and so on.
We went to the city for two days but then fled the angst as if it were a noxious fog.
So, it’s almost summer. Despite rain, rain and more of it! The wettest in living memory.
Thus spring has meant preparing for summer because when one lives on the coast, summer after all, is pre-eminent.
‘Sweet sweet burn of summer and summer wind… ‘ (KD Lang)
Every season, I write a longer blogpost, a bit like a newsletter, to have a chat about the previous season of doings.
At the end of every season and with the beginning of a new one, I write a blogpost that’s a bit like a newsletter, of where things are up to for this #writer.
What is tradition?
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it’s apparently, ‘…a way of acting that people have… continued to follow…’ through time.
The way I celebrate my birthday has become one such.
Not long after we moved back to Tasmania from the mainland, I thought how wonderful it might be to celebrate my birthday with a trip to Maria Island. The island has played a huge part in my life. Through my childhood, before it became a national park and World Heritage site, it was our playground. We would play in the tumbledown houses, swim in glass-like water. Simply, we would live Swallows and Amazons.
Having been away from our big garden on the coast for over 10 days, it has rocketed into spring in my absence. Sadly, the freesias are almost done and I’ve missed the best of the few tulips I had potted up. It’s not a groomed garden and things seem to appear from Heaven’s knows where, but that’s okay. The main thing is that it gives us such huge pleasure and an even bigger escape.