A touch of Paradise

Forest Pansy

I guess we all take the everyday for granted - our lives, family, friends, even gardens - and it is only when something or someone jolts us out of the routine of our regular daily existence that we begin objectively to really see and  become aware of what is actually around us.


This was brought home to me last week when I was frantically trying to finish off filling tubs with bedding plants and had to pause when a young boy's face appeared round the  trellis to ask if he could search for his football which had flown over the dividing  fence. Grandfather then appeared and, as we walked down the lawn, he looked around in astonishment and remarked

'This is a touch of Paradise'.


' ...We sat in the garden indolently reading. L not sitting but gardening. We had the best display of flowers yet seen - wallflowers in profusion, columbines, phlox etc

Columbines

and as we went huge scarlet poppies with purple stains on them. The peonies even about to burst.  There was a nest of blackbirds against the wall. Last night at Charleston I lay with my window open listening to a nightingale, which beginning in the distance came  very near the garden. Fishes splashed in the pond.
May in England is all they say - so teeming, amorous and creative.'
                                                        Virginia Woolf     Diary 28th May 1918