Flowers and vessel, 16 May 2020

Every morning I check the garden for what might have happened - 8 mls of rain - some brilliant grevilleas out, feed the goldfish. Some friends went out for coffee but were disturbed at seeing small crowds of people close together and not distancing.   There's a dawning realisation of lasting difficulty for artists and scholars, and for people separated over continents and states. So concentrate on what can be put in order and remember all the gardens you have lived near, as various as houses. In the Northern Territory I once lived in a wooden-louvred house built for missionaries in 1932, set about with red crotons and coconut palms, with a long swing suspended from a vast mango tree. Rainbow bee-eater birds swung on the washing line. The most ancient garden I've seen is one in the Temple of Apollo Hylates in Cyprus, Apollo of the Woods, where there are circular beds once planted with herbs, possibly bay or myrtle. Nearby, a great marble basin for washing in, like the tiny simulacrum beneath the flowers in the painting. Gardens disappear once the gardeners have gone, but they live in the memory. 

Diana Wood Conroy, 'Flowers and vessel', watercolour on Arches paper, 15 x 21 cm, 16 May 2020