Free Playing With Water by Kate Llewellyn Page A

lentils
    1 large onion, sliced
    2 cloves of garlic, crushed
    1 small tin of tomato purée
    200 grams of fresh peeled tomatoes or 1 x can of tomatoes
    3 tablespoons of olive oil
    900 millilitres of cold water
    salt and pepper to taste
    Method:
    Soak the lentils for an hour or two, rinse and cover with cold water. Boil until tender, with all the other ingredients. Then blend or just mash the mixture. Either way, don’t make it too smooth. Season and serve with good bread and more oil.
    This recipe is best doubled or trebled, as I can’t see the point of making just enough. This is for four people at one meal.
Thursday, 25th May
    Moss. In the cracks on the footpath beside the highway in Corrimal emerald-green moss is growing. I stepped up from the gutter and saw it. Moss can’t grow in pollution. It can be used in gardens, playgrounds andother places, like canaries were used in mining, as a warning of danger. Roses are used in this way in vineyards, to warn against disease threatening the vines. Here and in France there are vineyards with a rose planted at the end of every row.
    That the bright moss could grow there beside the road, with cars drawing up beside it at the lights, snorting out fumes, is amazing. David Bellamy, the botanist, reviewing a book called Moss Gardening: Including Lichens, Liverworts and Other Miniatures begs people never to collect living mosses, lichens or any other plants from the wilderness. And never to use peat under any circumstances, because peatlands are some of the most endangered living systems on earth. He says to use peat substitutes, which are easy to buy.
    There is a lot of peat for sale at almost every nursery I visit and I wonder if the sellers know it’s endangered.
    This little spill of moss, so bright, innocently growing there beside the cars and trucks, put a spring in my step all day. It was so valiant, such an emerald splash, squandered there by the gutter. What this moss also means is that there are spores wafting through the air by the million, waiting to fall on a suitable spot to grow. Many of these plants, lacking common names, are known only by their Latin names. So this drizzle of emerald that I saw probably has a Latin name. People were hurrying past with their shopping, or walking intothe optometrist nearby. It gripped me and it still does. I cannot get over it. It seemed so emblazoned, so unexpected, and such a gift, as if a tree had bled there.
Friday, 26th May
    The liliums are up. Knowing that they were planted too deep, I have been out there looking daily. Yesterday I planted pink foxgloves and tulips. Said I’d do it weeks ago. But saying a thing is about to be done is not necessarily doing it.
    Only a couple of the pansy seeds have come up. And a few of the Aquilegias too. This sowing of seeds is addictive. Something in it is atavistic. For so long humans have worked in agriculture that it may be something deep being fed in me when I sow. It is also the thrill of a gamble. A bit like throwing dice. Whatever the reason for it, I am devoted to sowing. I turn first to the seed racks when I enter a nursery.
    In Tanzania, I saw women sitting sorting seeds in the shade of an open iron shed, piles of seeds alongside them. Their babies lay beside them, or strapped to their backs. From time to time the women fed the babies and returned to their sorting. Some had a leather bottle with them which held a mixture of mashed banana and something else, I am not sure what. A woman would take a swig of this and give some to the baby.
    Each time I tear open a packet, I remember those women laughing, working, feeding their children beside the piles of seeds.
    Gerberas, impatiens, nasturtiums, stocks, these were some of the flowers my friend was growing for seeds on his farm beside Mt Kilimanjaro. The price per kilo of impatiens seed on the international market is fifty thousand US dollars, and when you look at the seed you can see why.
SEEDS
The pomegranate seeds have worked.
    You fed