Letters to garden makers

Dear Monty, Outburst An explosion of pyroclastic proportions Up from the depths Frustration pent up The gas of conflagration - Fire and brimstone. I struggle to control the frustration I feel. What would the stones have cried out ? Would they have cried ; 'Save!'? Or would they have cried a lament, a loud wail as they watched the agent of their release about to suffer ? The title given by men to Luke chapter 19 is : 'The triumphal entry' There was in fact very little to be triumphant about. Here was Christ entering the City of Jerusalem knowing our true hearts and what was to become of both him and the glittering city. Jonah saw a city spared after reluctantly preaching repentance, but Christ knew this city was heading for destruction, because they were about to take out the capstone. The stones could indeed have cried out. He defended those followers that did cry out because of the miracles they had seen, but it was a short-lived joy. Joy ...

Dear Monty, Time marches backwards, it is in a state of flux with your garden looking warm while today it is cold. All this is due to filming schedules. Time is a strange concept, this week we saw photographs of the beginning of the universe, taken now but looking back over unfathomable units of time. Words transcend time. I watched  'Life and Death in the the valley of the Kings' with Joann Fletcher last night. Egyptians lived in terraced houses with plastered walls painted with images. They had pots and jars containing oils, perfumes and eye-liner. They had cold storage and built-in ovens. There was a huge grain store which reminded me of the ones described in the Bible built under the guidance of Joseph during the good years before the famine. There were papyrus illustrations of eroticism which reminded me of Potiphars' wife and her longing to bed Joseph. Here on my Egyptian bed - my sarcophagus - I lay embalmed with oil lamp and the alabaster jar of spi...

Dear Monty, I have started a new series of paintings to prepare for the Orchid Festival later in the year at :  www.gardenofwales.org.uk    The transformation of caterpillar to butterfly remains one of the few remaining mysteries of life. Today I read about transfiguration, and realise that this process happens in front of our eyes and sometimes we hardly even notice. The garden was transfigured, a veil of rain lit by the sun - behind which were the muted early buds of Spring. A watercolour of reds, pale yellows, rusts and greens, with birds - pigeon, robin, blackbird and bullfinch all moving through the veil of light. The value of transfiguration is in its fleeting nature, it is all the more powerful and beautiful for it. The Kingdom is here in the call of crow and the sudden light of showers.

Dear Monty, www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/winifred-nicholson-1704 There are great artists who never really shouted about their art, but just got on and made it because they had a love and passion for making it. Winifred Nicholson was one of those artists. I love her sense of composition, light and colour. She is one of my all time favourite painters. When I visit the Nat. Museum of Wales in Cardiff, I make a pilgrimage to visit one of her paintings in the flesh. I stand before it and feel the breeze and the energy of the water. I admire her obvious ability to transmit life and energy through paint into my heart. One of my treasured possessions is this book by Christopher Andreae. I cannot paint like that, but I strive to capture something of the energy of life to this day. I have not given up yet. I am attempting a second portrait of an artist, it is in the early raw stages of watercolour directly painted on a rough plaster surface. It has yet to be resolved, but it is to ...

Dear Monty, Here I am with my middle class pretensions - sitting in the 'salon rouge' listening to Baroque music and sipping Earl Grey - when in truth I am a pleb in a house with a dodgy roof. I should be in work caring for the sick, but have been ill myself. Dawn came up below the garden, the moist air lit the trees in a golden light. I feel guilt for being here in my sanctuary. I read of  'a light for revelation and a glory to Israel' I suppose I have taken those words and taken them down into the depths of me. Others may be amazed, alarmed, quizzical or dismissive. The difference and the only difference between those reactions and mine is that I allowed them to take root in my heart, which is the beginning of a journey of discovery as well as an end. Everything else becomes unimportant. In the light, my doubts, sin, failure and the failure of 'religion' - everything- the world its deviousness and subterfuge - the deviousness and subterfuge of...

Dear Monty, I have just read the blog of Alison Levey www.blackberrygarden.co.uk   on signs of life in her garden. I too have been searching for the same signs this past week and like Alison, I found them in the garden. 28/2/13  Two years ten months and counting.                The cold wind remains                  Stars out                   Wind and stars in sweeps and curls                       Around cheek and jawline                          A beauty not mine. Remember 4 pots ! 2/3/13 Forgotten the meaning of 4 pots ! Like forgetting plants from the previous year in the garden. The cold and barren borders have become like my mind today. This heart of mine is cold. We are separated only in...