CAROLE ELLISON AND KATE SWINDLEHURST - BACK TO THE GARDEN
May by Carole Ellison
If it recalls Woodstock ‘ we are stardust, we are golden’ or the Biblical bliss of Eden ‘Back to the Garden is a beautiful title . Particularly when the garden is one of the greatest living archives on earth . There are bound to be other claimants to crown the ‘Best in Show; when it comes to plant endeavour, but the Cambridge Botanic Garden is way up there in league table for a collection of biological living wonders.
Carole Ellison, one of Cambridge’s most admired artists, and Kate Swindelhurst have dug their own metaphorical plot, based on the seasons of the famous acreage with a monthly creative diary. Kate catalogues the growth there - and accompanies each month with a short story.
Below is a brief selection of three months’ worth of stories. The publication of this joint creative effort will be an exemplar of how nature art and imagination can combine paintings and writing, visual and fictional to an intriguing effect.
MAY: Paradise
It is a mess, I suppose, she said – you know, overgrown, running wild. She closed her eyes. At once she heard the creak of a swing, felt the rough wood of the seat against her bare thighs, saw the tops of trees fall away as her sandalled feet rose against the sky and then dropped back, and again, and again, until she stepped off into grass that grew up to her armpits and scratched and tickled her calves. Poppies dotted the grass like fallen stars. My first garden, she said. I was four, I think. The houses were barely finished, the land around them a wilderness, mud and puddled craters and rubble, dandelions and buttercups and couch grass. My mother cried every day as she struggled to bring it all under control. For me, though, it was paradise: the smell of pineapple weed, the dusty sensation in my mouth as I let a fragment of pebbledash rinse itself clean. I felt brand new, in a world full of wonders. Your Eden, Robin said.
JULY By Carole Ellison
JULY: Classical Studies
... I make myself silent and tiger-tread through the trees towards the lake. The path winds through willows along the edge of the water and I follow it to the bench in the clearing. I’m screened from the eyes of waking waterfowl by a curtain of leaves. Clumps of bamboo stand guard at either side, rattling the tips of their spears. I breathe in: the smell of the water, the tobacco plants. Leaning back against the slats, I fumble the pack of cigarettes out of my pocket. The first one is crushed and snaps in two. I straighten the second, find the lighter, inhale, close my eyes.
Silence, almost. Only the chatter of the bamboos, a swish as the shreds of curtain rearrange themselves and a lapping there, and there – a moorhen intrigued by the smoke? Then a burst of noise: a crunch, a crack; a muted squeal; a giggle, a splash. I jab what remains
NOVEMBER by Carole Ellison
NOVEMBER: Pigeons
Walter waited, his overcoat wrapped tight around his knees. The wooden seat felt damp through the cloth though no sign of frost yet and the sun warm for November. He was too early, of course. Sometimes she was there before him. More often, she kept him waiting as she had when she was alive. Always on the last minute, cheeks flushed, hair flying, laughing at him for worrying, stretching up to kiss him. You should have married a shorter man, he’d say. You’ll do, she’d say. And maybe I still have some growing to do.
Here was the robin, another regular at this end of the gardens. It darted from branch to grass and back to branch in the bush behind him, so that he had to duck his head or look over his shoulder to keep it in view. Once it appeared on the arm of the bench, close enough to touch, shiny black eyes avoiding his, and immediately off again. He was sorry she wasn’t there to see: she loved the birds, all of them. Apart from the pigeons – couldn’t get past the fact that his weren’t the same as the feral pigeons who’d fly in close, spoiling picnics, mess everywhere. Vermin, she called them. Not these, he’d say. Look at this one, pretty fawn and white, look at the lovely wing markings. She wasn’t convinced.
