wild, bee on iris, blanket

Next to the vegetable garden is a garden left, for the last few months, to its own devices. It is a marriage of wildness and tranquility. Rolling, clambering sheets of wild clematis - bindweed, gardeners call it, and you can understand why they hate it, because of its indefatigable root system, but what noble beauty they miss in the flowers - have spread their bold, white trumpets, quick-off-the-mark leaves and tendrils over what was once a rubbish heap. Here and there, where vegetables grew, a parsnip is in flower. There are docks, dandelions, nettles and sow-thistles, and grass flourishing everywhere and already in seed. Forget-me-nots, too, though I remember that the owner, some years ago, had taken a dislike to these pretty self-seeders, and banished them from his garden.



A bee enters the corolla of a deep blue iris. It crawls over the fine, variegated pattern at the entrance and pushes its way past a petal, arranged horizontally like a flap; in towards the pollen, and down the flower's dark throat it goes, where the striated pattern of black and yellow, now all round it, confirms the way. A few second later it emerges, slowly backwards, flies off, circles and then comes back to the same spot for more.



A woman spreads a blanket in the Grove. In her hands, it billows outwards and settles neatly on the ground, confirms its boundaries. She smooths out her territory and places her crawling baby in the middle of it. Her collie-type dog lies , its front paws forward, and watches approvingly.