Episode 62: Seventeen Cypress and a Life to Create
Welcome to Episode #62:
Everything happens and nothing happens. I wanted to share this for a thousand days, time got in the way, splaying me. I went hunting for words to live by instead of writing my own.
This is a podcast and reflection on a house and a garden…..
I buy another five cypress. I work hard, water, pray, read them poetry. I listen to books as dig, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnet….A Paris year, John Baxter….and I dream of a day where they will drill their taproot down into the earth, deep, hardy specimens, that I never even water.
I go back to Italy and I look at the cypress, in gardens, next to villas, lined up on roads. They seem to hold the measure of us, grand companions on the journey of life. Guardians and mysterious knowing trees, always I feel better when I see them in the distance. When I realised I could have a taste of Italy here in my back yard, well why not? There was no turning back.
The cypress at night on view to my neighbours house....Shownotes:
Everyday in Tuscany: Seasons of an Italian Life by Frances Mayes
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
A Paris Year by John Baxter
A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home
Stonefields and Country Gardens by Paul Bangay
In the paddock with the chickens“Nature accompanies me, exalts me” - Henri Matisse
Music Composed by Richard Johnston
And so I find myself at home, the home I dreamt about for a ridiculous amount of time. I had this idea a long time ago of a white room and a historic cottage that would be my armour and perhaps my libation and it appears it eventually turned up. In a strange turn of events, it arrived, or I did. It was a relief I must say. I had to make do for a long while in a kind of knowing way that where I was was not quite the right place, but I was there nonetheless. Two of our children were born in the previous home. Fortunate I am the queen of making do, so I just got on with it, although I was always hunkering for that something else, that something more. A tree change not a sea change. I grew up near the sea, lived there for years. I wanted open rural spaces, farms, a country life, a line of poplars and a sunset charged my mind……
Excerpt from the Podcast Share.
MJ
