Flowers with moufflon, 14 April 2020

The untended flowers in the garden that keep blossoming are a great comfort - uriops the yellow daisy, geraniums and blue sparaxis, zinnias and salvias, pineapple sage. I used to take a little bunch of such flowers to my mum when she was old and faint and losing her memory and we would slowly name each one, her eyes lighting up with pleasure, lifting a bent hand to touch the petals. What a garden she created, searching out rare flowers and always extending the garden beds to have more blossoms. I remember her tiger lilies as a child, as tall as I was, staring at me as I gazed at them. She and my grandmother had a dictum: if there is a desirable plant drooping into the public space of the footpath you may snip a small cutting. They both carried scissors in their capacious handbags as they walked the streets to the shops. 

I am glad everyone is gardening in these luminous autumn days, so that Bunnings is almost out of seedlings and seeds. Laying down memories for children. Her garden has gone, but I remember every plant and tree. 

People pick those little bunches everywhere. i remember being in Ephesus in Turkey, where the guide who took me around the ruined basilica of St John was an old weathered man. He kept picking flowers and giving them to me, red roses, hyacinths, clustered together like an Ottoman embroidery.

Diana Wood Conroy' Flowers with moufflon', watercolour on Canzon paper 15 x 21 cm,14 April 2020