Evening draws in.

Tweet

Dusk is gathering in my garden behind the house. The afternoon clouds have moved away and the heat that built up over the day is escaping, allowing a new freshness to take over and I’m happy. Not happy in a bouncy way of course, just filled with a deep and dignified sense of well-being and satisfaction; I’ll leave it to much younger people to suffer the kind of happiness that issues forth in energetic bursts of raucous laughter and other uncouthery. Meanwhile I’ll sit quietly and enjoy the evening on my own. My dahlias are looking rather splendid in the evening gloom, pops of vibrant red leaping out of thick, green foliage. They transport me (yes I’m off again) to our garden in Africa in the 1960s. My mother’s prized flower bed sat in a lawn near a giant bluegum tree , though no kookaburra ever sat there singing. Wrong continent. The flower bed was circular, two metres in diameter and was packed full of giant dahlias of a surprising range of colours. We weren’t allowed near that bed, although that’s most often where we were to be found playing: it was an ideal lair for snakes.