Aphids suck the Sycamore

The weather has been unusualy hot and sunny for about six weeks and I’ve been busy in the garden, most recently watering the vegetables every day but yesterday I sat and relaxed among the trees…… hearing the occasional gentle rustle of the breeze in the birches and the ‘shush’ from the pine, sounds and memories of happy days.

I am beneath two tall birches, tiny leaves on delicate wands waving in the blue sky casting flickering shadows on my note book. One has two trunks like the DNA double spiral. Through the darkness of a pine I see a bloom, purple, deep and silent on a Rhododendron. The air too is deep scented with bluebell, lavender and pine. Aphids suck the sycamore. Two Polish lads finish mending the road and drive away and there is birdsong and the occasional gentle rustle of the breeze in the birches and the ‘shush’ from the pine. I could easy breathe more of Endymion’s narcotic scent to sleep again in Grecian moonlit hills, where fragrant pines say, ‘shush’.

We go away and the world becomes itself. In meditation or wild places sometimes we are surprised finding each other being ourselves. Goldfinch are beside me. Time to go..... but how long would it take to reach enlightenment; the life of a tree or the days of the restless flies. Voracious caterpillars seem too busy eating and yet they are transformed. A hover fly makes an urgent buzz. Two bubble bees hum purposefully. A wasp, quiet as a tiger, flies low through the tall buttercups.