Kind Eden - Workshop in Steve's Garden
Berries blushing
White tattering
Leaves harlequining
Butterflies battling
Bog oak resting
Aliums structuring
Iris rhizomes charging
On Sunday October 5th - we gathered in Warboys for an experimental garden words workshop. It was a wonderful day, the weather was cool but gentle and Steve's garden is a layout of small plant rooms, a mini orchard, an abundance of rocks, trees, shrubs and flowers. There was plenty of wildlife about too.
Here's a taste of the writing from Simone - which will along with everyone else's be edited into a whole - a performance for voices which we are calling - a Word Orchestra. The idea is to harvest the images, sounds, tastes on the wind and smells of the garden to produce a wall of experience.
Kind Eden – An Oasis in the Fens
Crunchy acorns underfoot, pop, split, crack
Bug hotels, ancient totem poles, stand the test of time
Tall, dry grasses bristly whisper
Bursts of pink and yellow rose petals
Rosehips, big as apples, bob in the breeze
Mugwort’s fading feathery leaves
Mugwort: sweet, grounding, earthy, minty, woody
Branches rubbing, squeaking like tiny invisible mice
Allium, an exploded brown firework, frozen on bursting
Bees busy themselves on purple and yellow Michaelmas Daisies
Sunny nodding heads of orange and yellow calendula
Spotty ladybird hiding on spotty lungwort
Pyracantha. Fire thorn! Orange pomes dangle in clusters like
earrings
A tiny pink hollyhock no higher than the arm of the bench
gets a second wind
Indecipherable birds chattering in the distance
Soft woodchip underfoot, cushions each step
Bright red fire drop pips on Berberis’ burgundy leaf
Hushhhh say the bamboo leaves
Swampy pond, the scum line thick green algae
Deadwood, like old bones
Tiny living succulents, green, red, brown
Creamy pampas grass, a royal guard’s plume
Trickling, splashing waterfall shimmering, never-ending
Cabbage Whites dance, whirl, chase and scatter in all
directions
Red Admiral on calendula, colourful contrast
Trees rustle and sway, making way for a monster
Birds struggle against the gusts
Red Kite takes advantage of a slipstream
Pink sedum, clouds of marshmallow and coconut
Orange-yellow flames of Nasturtium
Janet's wild garden words:
Black chocolate soil. Crumbling, dry.
Snail shell, dirty, clinging soil, crumbs of earth, clinging.
Acorn leaf fingers, yellowed like smokers hands.
Twigs and bones.
Twigs like bones.
Knarled and nobbled.
Nettle leaves, like lace. Lace wings.
Ladybird hides beneath the bark, making a mark, of a pheremone.
Cut wood. The smell of pine.
Gnarled apple oak.
Five kites, reaching heights,
Unknown to human kind.
A green cup holds in place a burst of purple and yellow, the whole only as wide as a thumb. At the centre, a pin-cushion ball of mustard yellow, bright against the soft blush of purple.
Slivers of that soft, royal hue radiate like myriad spokes of an intricate wheel. Each spoke, narrow and sparse, yet strong and wide at the same time. Wide enough to catch both light and shadow.
Jaqui's Contribution:
Autumn rising
Berries blushing
White tattering
Leaves harlequining
Butterflies battling
Bog oak resting
Aliums structuring
Iris rhizomes charging
Fenland Oasis (In the style of
Ted Hughes by Roger Mitchell)
A garden—
A green gasp in the flatlands.
Cornfields retreat,
Forty-five years in the making—
A man’s lifetime rooted here.
Contrived, yes—
But wildness breathes between the spade marks.
It hunkers low in the Fens,
Crouched beneath the Fen Edge Alps—
These humps of earth, these quiet upheavals.
Everywhere, abundance—
Acorns flung like dropped coins.
Rarities whisper at your boots.
“Jersey Cudweed!” Steve cries—
And the air itself seems to turn and listen.
Apples—an ocean of them.
Branches bow like beasts under their own giving.
This year, the fruiting is fevered—
Birds will gorge themselves into winter’s sleep.
Something digs the peat—
Squirrel? Badger? Mole?
Rabbit, certainly—
Its neat, black currants in the grass betray it.
Bird boxes—nailed dreams—
What small lives flicker here?
A yellow hose snake slithers across the beds—
The garden’s pulse, warning to toads and frogs alike.
Dead wood stands like prophets.
Trunks hollow, holding their slow surrender.
Carbon sifts back into earth—
The oldest chemistry of patience.
Comma butterfly, ruddy darter—
Both settle on the bird box roof,
Winged sparks on lichened landing strip,
Drinking the last sun from a cold blue wind.
Man’s ponds, man’s making—
Duckweed without ducks,
But beneath the skin of water,
Root and wriggle, silt and breath.
Reeds tremble nearby.
Chinese water-deer, ghost-brown and silent—
Their teddy-bear ears gone this morning.
They leave no print but the wind’s.
A dovecote tilts—
Abandoned craft from another world,
Nosed into soil,
No doves, no flight—just the idea of it.
Centre stage—
A rockery rises like an Eiger,
Bold stones bound in moss.
I climb, small god of this green altar,
Looking down on the water’s slow heart.
Here, leisure is the hush between thoughts—
Logs for thrones, chairs for dreamers.
The air holds its breath.
Peace hums under the skin of the day.
Now the timekeeper knocks—
Back to the hut, to the talk,
To words shaped from what we’ve seen.
The garden remains—
Breathing, watchful, still making itself.
Steve's contribution:
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