Letters to garden makers

Dear Monty, I agree that well crafted words can create pictures, I am not so good with words but nevertheless I continue to write and make pictures. '....his heaving breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all storms - emblem to humanity of the rest and silence into which the storm called life must hush at last.' Charles Dickens 23/11/12 Our grandchild moves towards birth, I move towards death, the earth moves towards its purpose. The single cell to countless cells. The beginning and end. The sheer beauty of it. 24/11/12 Sophie is here upon the face of this jewel earth. The garden decays into Winter, back to its bones, bones that will once again be clothed with life. The trees rest. The grass has now become weeds. No digging or spraying, I just mow the weeds in Spring. Still it forms a green carpet under trees. Sometimes I dig out the dandelions if they halt my eye, but that is for later. For now the bones help me to see...

Dear Monty, Three 'poems' 16/11/12 Let us pray Let us Judge Let us kill with the 'moral' high ground Let us fire rockets Target individuals Let us defend the faith with swords Jealousy consumes me How foolish I am. 17/11/12 The toil of the soil Writing books while gardens sleep While I sleep Sustainable energy ? The turbines stand motionless - yet more appear on the hills The waterfalls pound down the valley Once turning mill wheels and looms Wood burned. We then dug coal Hollowed out mountains Then came welfare and unemployment Are we too many with too much ? I always want more. 'Ah how fleeting Ah how futile' 18/11/12 There will be another river which flows from a new valley There will be trees in this garden With leaves for healing And fruit And in the river will be Fishes in abundance. Paul.

Dear Monty, Remembering 11/11/12 Walking the waterfall woodland of Ystradfellte with Charles Hawes. We saw the  sheer beauty and power of water cutting through rock - of trees grasping soil through shaped formed roots following rock contours. Colour blazed now and then - orange yellow red. Green tinge to the back of a red-breasted robin. Mud - thundering water - waterproofs proved. No proof or evidence for faith. The curse is knowledge - knowledge is the curse - we know too much. Remembering  - not the fallen dead Though I do remember them - but do not stop - no silence. Remembering the pain that knowledge brings From having minds which contemplate both good - and evil Which understand and misunderstand Judge and misjudge Knowing that life is finite and full of fears - joy - tears. It means we watch ourselves grow old Remembering youth - energy But perhaps old age is another stage Set for playing out  a role '...

Dear Monty, 'Recalled to Life' I have discovered some of my old drawings from the early eighties, when I had just started the Fine Art Degree at Portsmouth. I searched them out because a friend reminded me of my love of trees. God moves through people in a kind of energy - a living energy that points to the source of all living things. It was this energy that I recognised first in trees ! It sounds mad but once I started to see the power of this energy, I could see it everywhere. I could see it in the movement of ships through water, through the energy of our activities. Through our bodies our movement. Looking back on these drawings makes me sad, because I seem to have lost that energy in my artwork and maybe my life now, but I still see it in the hills, in the cycle of the seasons, even out of our kitchen window. I also see it in the paintings of Van Gogh and others who see beyond the obvious. You said on ...

Dear Monty, Grand designs and discovery. 31/10/12 Watched 'Grand Designs' filmed on the Isle of Skye. I remembered those amazing landscapes and quickly changing weather. I distinctly remember watching water plumes like smoke being blown from the burn back up the hill opposite the loch we stayed at. I have lost all my photographs of that holiday, all I have now are precious memories and some sketches and a couple of paintings, all the more precious for the loss, but not a jot more precious than the beauty of the place. The place is life affirming, the house constructed during the film, was not grand but small - it locked into its landscape. The mountains dominate and dwarf the buildings on Skye. 2/11/12 Racing cold clouds - cold rain after a cold night with hailstones. Bright and breezy and no eggs from the chickens. I enjoyed the 'pootling' on Gardeners' World. 3/11/12 Bright cloudy sky - white topped hills - dog walked, leaves raked a...