June

The midpoint of the year arrives and although the weather is dull, turning windy the greenness of the garden dominates my experience and for the first and last time I turn poetry. I don't know why I wrote so little poetry about the garden as it is my normal mode of thinking and reflection. Perhaps all I want to do was just capture my present experience rather than reflect upon it. The greenness screens the garden from the outside world but this, if anything, merely accentuates the continual noise of London
buttercup

Garden

1st June

The first day of June and very wet. Leaves dripping with rain and perfect spheres of water caught in shining brilliance
leaf

2nd June

This morning the garden damp with rain, but bright sunshine. Grass in the shady corners heavy with droplets of water. Later in the afternoon a bright, warm June day, the air full of insects and me longing for the bright darting flights of a flycatcher. Little chance of that, alas.

5th June

The garden is wreathed in greenness. The surrounding curtain of trees gives it the aura of an oasis on quiet mornings, even if noise does soon start to penetrate its solitude. The Mulberry tree in its center mounts in waves of green up to its pinnacle.
In the midst of this the honeysuckle is beginning to uncup its flowers, lifting bright fingers to the sky.
honeysuckle

8th June

As the last of the blossom fades the garden seems to shift into a new phase. The seedpods extend like ladders on the stalks of the Comfrey and that abundant blossoming of spring recedes behind the growing signs of approaching death and transmutation. The Mulberry leaves have now swollen to their full-size and today are wet with rain. It was one of those overcast summer days, neither hot nor cold but waiting for the next shower

9th June

The greenness of June surrounds me
Trees have plumed dense billows of green
Grass grows lush and thick
And comfrey falls in thick bee-clustered swoons

In quietness it makes the garden seem a secret place
Buildings are hidden, sight obscured
But as London wakes noise penetrates the green curtain
The mutterings, the grumblings, the throbbing

Are oblivious to the green silence 		tree leaves

10th June

A very dull day. Dampness in the air, never quite becoming rain, but wonderful gusts of wind blowing through the garden setting the Mulberry astir like a threatening monster. And up in the ash tree stirring the leaves into swirling gyrations.

12th June

I was attracted by a chittering of birds in the bushes next to the garden hut. Standing quietly underneath them a family of great tits busied and chatted themselves around me. There was constant activity and constant noise and the parents were working incredibly hard! Elsewhere new flowers are emerging -- the delicate blossoms of the Jasmine and the more earthy blooms of the Bramble. Meanwhile flowers now long wilted and fallen have transformed themselves into the green fruit of cherry and damson
great_tit

14th June     

Puffballs have appeared on the lawn. One particularly fine example has emerged silently overnight presenting a perfectly spherical globe in the green grass		 puffball

16 June

The magpies have been very noisy for the past few days. Bursts of cackling keep erupting throughout the garden. What they are up to I don't know. A sunny day but windy and above the garden a crane looms from somewhere inside the school, it all gives the garden a strange atmosphere. It is warm and bright but restless.

Green

tree
Soft colour greenness
Life unfurling
Everything fresh and fullness
The grass, the leaf, the coming
 
Trees below. Life breathes
Spirals, blooms
In colour, soft wreaths
Everything unfurled and fullness
 
The lawn is wet, growing
Softness of green
The colour of life looming
And here fresh, bright greening
 
Unfurled now as it has always been
Life changing, and unchanging
The promise and past of green
Returning, returning, returned