Free Playing With Water by Kate Llewellyn

The superintendent of the Botanic Gardens in Mexico City, Vincente Cervantes, sent dahlia seeds to Abbe Cavanilles, the director of the Royal Gardens of Madrid, and it was this man who named the dahlia.
    Until recently I did not know dahlias could be grown from seed. Daphne, Terry’s wife, showed me a small plot with some green shoots in it months ago. She said they were from dahlia seeds she’d gathered. The flowers are now in bloom and I will walk next door and see how they are.
    Later. The dahlias are finished. Cut back to stalks and their seeds gathered. Terry was out staring at his sugarloaf cabbages, watering-can in hand. There was some kind of liquid fertiliser in the can. He began to tell me that he had lost many parsnips in the heat.
    ‘I sowed row after row of carrots and parsnips; I even kept them under planks. But the ground was too hot. Boy, when I did get some, you saw hundreds of baby carrots. And I mean baby carrots. The ground was toohot and they just stopped growing. You remember the stunted parsnips I gave you?’
    Yet now there are two rows of parsnips thriving, their green tops waving in the strong wind.
    ‘You thought seeds needed heat to germinate, didn’t you?’ Terry continued. ‘Well, they do, but the heat can kill them too. Even in the shade under the verandah in pots they died. I lost all my beans and all the lettuces.’ He gestured to the peas growing up a trellis and to where the rows of beans once were.
PARSNIP
Earth’s long ivory tooth
    in a buried smile
    which becomes
    winter’s snarl
    tugging at the hem
    of my skirt as I walk by
    looking for a cabbage
    bending to see
    into the heart of the
    green thornless rose
    that is not yet ready
    but this parsnip is
    spilling earth
    as it comes out.
    A life spent in a grave
    beneath a green fern
    it lies on the path
    like a fish
    dying in the air.
    Walking indoors
    shaking off the soil
    that gave me this parsnip
    to boil
    all it needs now
    is pepper and a bit of butter
    but the hole most surprised
    born in that wrenching moment
    lies there gasping in the sun
    dark and thoughtful.
    Terry returned then to the topic of olive trees and the magnolia in the street. While I was away the magnolia was pulled up and left lying. Terry waited until a break in the rain to replant it. When he went out, council workers driving past saw him and stopped. They replanted the tree for him, and for me. Terry went inside and did not see them take the barbed wire away from all the trees. I suppose it is illegal. But that was fifty dollars worth of wire.
    It is a mistake to think that the ripping up of trees means hatred of trees. It is just something to do whenidle, perhaps, just something to do when irritable with drink. I keep thinking that it is important not to take this personally, either as a form of hatred of gardens or trees or of myself. We are all connected, but while I may have provoked those who have pulled up the trees, it’s better for me not to blame them, or myself, but put it down to an act of nature. I am struggling to deal with another grief, and seeing the trees, so seemingly unprovoking and benign, being attacked makes me think it’s best to just plug on. Some kind of hope, some faith, is necessary and, above all, no bitterness. Give me a gracious acceptance of my lot.
    One day, I hope I will harvest olives from my three trees. One day, I hope my olive oil can be used as a form of stock for soup. I mean by this, that if you don’t have any stock, vegetables and olive oil make good soup. For instance, Peri wrote out the recipe for the soup she made for our dinner; more a list of ingredients to boil than a recipe. Here is the list: tomato paste, soaked chickpeas, a tin of tomatoes, garlic, onions, water, plenty of oregano and good olive oil. Boil until chickpeas are soft.
    There are several other very good soup recipes in a book using olive oil as the essential ingredient. Here is the best lentil soup I’ve had:
F AKI S OUPA
150 grams of brown