Metamorphosis

It had to happen, of course. That my courtyard garden change into a toddler's playground. Oh, the plants are all still there. They are still growing, and being infested, and flowering, or not. The veggies were a one-season wonder. I get more pleasure from the annuals and the succulents. And they have fewer bugs.


But now that I have a toddler over to play twice a week, THAT is the focus of my courtyard. So, I have decided to transfer the stories about our play-dates from 'Plumbing' to 'Dolwendee'. Back in the years 1982 to 1985 I ran a Family Day Care in my garden in St Ives. The house there was transformed, too. Down on side, there was a go-cart track, with tyres, and planks and a skid pattern into the wall at the bottom. I guess you could say that I have form.

Anyways, look at the difference between these images of Alannah painting, and the shots last week of her first foray (at Ma's place) into painting. For starters, we ditched the smock. Mainly because Alannah insisted 'No more'. Then we got proper artists brushes rather than brushes used by house-painters. And and and ... I put loads my paint into the pots, which caused her to grunt with pleasure.

*Hand on heart* ... this was all Alannah's work, this painting. I did not guide the brush in any way. She would look at me in that way that says 'are you nuts?'

The solace of sweeping

There is a certain calmative effect engendered by the rhythmic sweeping of a courtyard.

See that massive tree towering over my courtyard, resplendent in its summer livery? Hiding within that livery lurk spots of bright orange, thousands of tiny seeds. Circular seeds. Hard seeds. Seeds that are now, in this fading summer that never-was, falling inexorably onto the bitumen and courtyard below. Just yesterday, I heard the first crunch-crunch as the passing traffic squashed them into oblivion. Noisily into oblivion.

Those that fall into my courtyard, do so silently, but nevertheless messily.

Following that denuding. comes the autumnal falling of leaves, and leaves, and leaves. For months on end. Seemingly until the lime shoots find their way through the branches with the turn into the spring. But before they sprout into incipient leaves, we have the floating of 'fluff'.

A spawning if you will ... a mess of a spawning.

A cycle that encompasses the year. A year of messes, which require sweeping. And sweeping is such sweet solace.