Letters to garden makers

Dear Monty, From Hay on Wye  to the Dales, a ramble of thoughts. Hay on Wye I too muddle through most days, I am a muddling type of person. I identify with the French desire not to be bound by bureaucracy (which we seem to have a love affair with - so much so we are binding ourselves with bonds that are getting tighter - but we seem to accept them as though they are good for us !) Your ramble through France is akin to my ramble through life. I am not intellectual, but I ended up going to hear Rowan Williams and Neil MacGreggor discuss the relevance of Christian Imagery in art, a few days before trundling back again to listen to your presentation/promotion of 'The Road to Le Tholonet '. There is a tenuous link in my life with Rowan Williams, he has relatives that I have met in Ystradgynlais the next door village and a place I have worked in for the last 20 years, but also I discovered he went to my old school when it was a Grammar School. (not a Comprehensive School f...

Prayer flags 10 tea towels Blue green yellow red Billow on the line Above the bed The bed is of Columbine A hedge of Box Meadow Cranesbill Sage Redcurrant And Gooseberry. This is the bed on which my head rests The light illuminating the greens And the pinks and purples. It is remarkable how by accident, self seeding and failure That this picture is revealing itself A prayer to the start of the day And an end to the turmoil in my head ? Borrowing I find myself borrowing trees Landscape Garage And rats From my neighbour Though we share the rats in equal measure. The trees are there to mask our ugly house And the mountain is hidden from us But the Montana has created a spectacular tower And the Forest Flame crackles skywards. Love Love Is patient Is kind But these attributes are hard to find In me. You however are a different matter Exuding it from your pores Like a fine perfume. ...

Worn and torn with journeys In the wet and cold Sun and heat Snow and frost To compost heap Chicken house And shady corner They grow thin soled Leather creased and cracked We become ghosts of ourselves. P.

Dear Monty, I sense that you are keenly aware of the healing power of the natural world. I suffer from bouts of melancholy, and when I get to a point where I no longer understand myself or my fellow human beings and our tiresome evil actions in the name of some higher good, I find that I cry out to God who is not unknown to me and ask for an answer, some peace in this turmoil. Now I know that sounds like a contradiction, perhaps it is, it certainly is a conundrum. As I sat despairing at my own anger and the futility of killing one another, an answer came in the form of a green-veined white butterfly feeding off a cuckoo flower. The sight of it was so beautiful, the powdery green veins on the underside of the butterfly, and the delicacy of the cuckoo flower itself, normally not given a second glance. The cuckoo flower or lady's smock arrived of its own volition in the damp end of the garden where I made a small pond and allowed the grass and 'weeds' to do their ...

Dear Monty, 18/5/13  The top of Carn Ingli was cold, and a sea mist drifted in obliterating the landscape I was attempting to sketch, but this is how this place becomes so beautiful. The hills came and went fading into grey-blue then white. The burnt hill - umber and ochre with sudden lit up greens. Acid yellow gorse and the common land spotted with tumps of heather and sheep manure. I sat feet in the direction of the chapel and its graveyard, head in the heavens - communing with angels when a group of posh people broke into the silence like oafs - cursing the ways of the Welsh ! 19/5/13 Is God here ? I am not in church I  am here on the slopes below the hill of angels. Skylark song and the breeze - that is all I hear, no voice of God - or is this His voice ? It is so powerful in its bubbling intensity. For me it speaks, so does this stone and the sculpted hill.  I am an oaf too sometimes. Paul

Dear Monty, 17/5/13  The darling buds break and my mind swirls in a strange fog. The trees are theatrically lit - silver, lime green, yellow, gold and red - wine red - a wine gum luminescence. There is blue reflecting off the path stones - I am content. To me this garden is as good as Allt-y-Bela, but I am no Arne Maynard. I watch as it develops - like a slow motion film. I realise that discontent breeds unhappiness - it is a spiralling path to a place of shadows where living becomes just functioning. The more I am discontent - the more miserable I become - I look for what I believe I deserve but cannot find it. When I saw the garden this morning it reminded me why I started writing letters to you, I too have the privilege of having a space where I can breathe. My jewels are scattered but they radiate to a level that pleases my eye. The more content we are with whatever we have the happier we are. Paul.

Monty, What will we leave behind ? Gardens change, paintings fade, words remain. I have discovered that apart from Sir Harry Secombe, the recently retired Archbishop of Canterbury - poet, philosopher and intellectual - Rowan Williams went to my old school. Perhaps I should wear the old school tie? I have continued to be subversive, and am painting more native orchids and butterflies as miniature fresco's. I am thinking of applying to enter the Monmouth Show   www.monmouthshow.co.uk  and to put up a stall there with these and other paintings. My son-in-- law will be there with his Longhorns, which I have also painted. I so want to gain some time back for painting, and would like to retire from the nursing profession ...It is a fantasy of mine to be able to earn enough from painting to get us by. So I came out of the rain and the cold garden to paint a Comma which I saw fleetingly in the sun and warmth of last week ! Paul