6. ‘DEADLINES’ – always a grim word, generally unreasonable: i.e. exam schedules
Garden flowers with butterflies - illustrator Sarah Keen
We sat out together in my small city garden; the gamekeeper whose name is Adam, me and my long-lost cousin. My cousin wandered away down the garden’s length to discover the pond at its end.
My garden is 20 Ells long and full of seeds. The garden is warm in the Summer’s evening, fragrant and packed with roses. Flowering Elecampane remembers Helen of Troy. She who was kidnapped by Paris when gathering this golden herb. There are no deadlines for these plants. They cross barriers at will. No forbidden fruits. No mark in the sand that maps a fatal boundary. All thrives, all looks set to continue. In the corner a witch hazel sits quietly waiting for late winter. Then she will set out flowers like tiny suns, promising spring – ending the darkness.
Remembering that evening, it seems that the garden was never more beautiful. The wild flowers and the herb collection were in full bloom – each with their own stories, medicinal, mythological or linked to the gods. Although I did not know it I had sown a word tree and it was beginning to grow.
Adam understood the garden and named the plants. This was Sweet Cecily, here is Angelica protecting against demons and arthritis. “You must take some home,” I say smiling. “To protect you and your bones.” Adam smiles back. Then he reaches out and caresses the back of my neck with one tender and delicate stroke that sweeps down to the base of my spine.
In that instant I know our bodies have reached an ancient, unspoken agreement. But sitting in that summer’s garden we had the world but no time. The evening was slipping away. Tomorrow’s fair was a deadline that could not be postponed for other games. My cousin walks through the garden towards us. “It’s full of frogs,” he says, genuinely amazed by the city’s habitat. But it’s not in the pond that I need look for princes in disguise.
I stand up to go into the kitchen to make some coffee. “Make it instant,” says Adam, ” – none of that waiting around for filtered”