mosaic, seeds, dialogue

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Leaves spread by the wind and flattened by the rain and footsteps on to the wet tarmac.

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I clear the riot of nasturtiums, many of them still in flower, from the vegetable beds where they self-sow every year and I dig the ground over ready for vegetable crops in the Spring. I know full well that among the lettuces or peas that I will be cultivating next year, the nasturtiums (they are the climbing variety) will sprout and clamber everywhere, over the fence and over anything that stands upright. At first I will hoe the seedlings out, but in time as the other vegetables are harvested, the nasturtiums will have the beds and the fence to themselves. Their scarlet, orange and yellow flowers and round green leaves will lie like a rich, variegated blanket over the garden. Now, as I bury the little caper-like seeds by the score,(they are like capers because the nasturtium is a close relative of the caper and its seeds may be substituted for them in cooking), I think that perhaps they should become the main crop in these beds, and I a nasturtium farmer.

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My third beautiful thing to day is a response from Lucy Kempton in Compasses to the question, "just what have you been doing with yourself?" And so the dialogue proceeds, encouraged by the time and the weather that ticks and blows through cyber space. Should the dialogue continue? There seems to be no doubt in either of our minds, that it should, though we agree that it should be allowed its own pace, quickening and slowing as the poems and our inclinations or other preoccupations dictate.