Grace...

... for Knots in the String.

It’s been autumnal here at the cottage for a couple of days. As if summer, Indian and otherwise, has decided enough’s enough for now. A hiatus, thank the stars! And so I sit on the couch to write, the heater murmuring every now and then, and I feel the comfort of a cream and camel fringed rug over my legs. My eyes are heavy after 4 days in the city where I was always rushed and rushing, and where Pupsicle was confused and at odds and wondering where his big garden was.

As I write, the waves thump on the beach in a substantial swell, and the old windows rattle. It’s just Pups and me alone with that smashing sound. It feels as if the sea is shouting – the earth shuddering with the vibrations. I find the noise soothing because the sea speaks in many voices and this is just one. They all appeal.

The lack of city noise seeps into my bones and the tension pours away from my limbs – quicksilver and I’m done with the glister. Enough to read May Sarton’s words and meditate on them.

“Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.”

Apart from anything else, grace is such a beautiful word. It has a divine quality, a sense of virtue. But for me, it oft describes a quiet person endowed with empathy and wisdom. To say she (or he) moves with grace is an accolade. They have an aura that is as soft as silk gauze and wraps around people. Despite its sheer, insubstantial quality, it leaves a sense of warmth and… goodness.

Gardening gives me grace or perhaps grace gives me gardening. It gives me time to drift, to pay no heed to the bigger issues, to think on how things grow, why they grow, will they grow. Does my garden see me and decide it will wrap itself around me in colours of verdant greens, autumnal golds, or even bare winter forms where empty branches hold out their arms saying, ‘If you need me, I’m here…’? I suspect so because the gardens and I are intimately acquainted. My hands have buried themselves deep in the soil and I’ve had conversations with my plants.

Are our gardens graceful spaces? The Matchbox garden may have a vestige of that, as if the silk gauze left fine threads behind. The coast garden? Not what I consider graceful, but it offers grace. It lets the ‘slow circles of nature’ surround me.

The last few days have rushed by in a jetstream. Trail runs, city chores, transporting those who need it, blood-tests, a pup requiring attention, domestics. How fortuitous that the tiny town garden needs to be cossetted. Autumnal plants are revealed under overgrown summer foliage and as I leave for the coast, I look out the window and the nerine buds are en pointe. They emerge from the wings and are about to dance – white tutus puffed up to show slim, graceful stems.

And yet, things to do on reaching the coast. A bundle of hearts sent to R.A.W. (Rural Alive and Well), a bundle of hearts sent to www.1000hearts.com.au to be provided to groups who request them, a bundle of hearts packaged with a mini Easter egg in each bag for Gibson Ward’s Palliative Care.

An Easter wreath made for the cottage front door – with the Pupsicle’s help. He’s very good at removing the willow fronds as I try to twist them, and shreds the garnet foliage of the viburnum like a mulcher. Still, we finish the wreath… but its destined to be pulled apart today. Not standing up well to doors opening and closing.

Making postcards (for our postcard club) because of the absolute dearth of postcards in shops. Thirty years ago, I studied artists’ paper- and book-making at the University Art School when they had a fine, world class papermill. One of our projects was the making of creative postcards and in fact when we had completed our pieces, they were sent on a national tour.

(Collage by Nick Bantock, author of the brilliantly illustrated books Griffin and Sabine, amongst others.)

I wandered into an art-shop this week and found blank watercolour postcards, also purchasing a watercolour brush because my old kit from Art School seems to have vanished in a Marie Condo moment. I added some miniscule watercolour paper and tubes of Raw Umber and Neutral Tint. I recalled momigami and washi papers, mull and book cloth and wish I still had them. I remember beautiful metallic waxes, and sheets of crushed gold paper that had patina and depth. Sheets of Letraset. Old maps, stamps and so much more. We learned how to collect ephemera – it’s something for which I would have loved a set of wooden filing drawers. Art in the style of Nick Bantock. I’m tentative to make these cards but ‘every occasion is an odyssey.’ (Elizabeth Beggins)

Today though, I’m allowing my gardens to offer me grace to unwind, teasing the knots from the string. I loosen and notice one more ‘last’ rose of the season. Madame Alfred Carriere – such a graceful climbing rose.

What better music than Valse de la Rose.

Dear Reader, may your days be filled with grace.

PS: Dear Postcard Clubbers. I am aware of those who don’t wish to share postal addresses and that’s perfectly fine, but for the others, will I just email the list to you? It’d be more fun to make it global so that mail flies hither and yon. I received my first one on Monday – from Western Australia. Lovely! And if any new subscribers wish to join the postcard club, just email me your postal address via the contact on www.pruebatten.com