Still Life Between Shed and Garage
Today the garden is putting on an exhibition. I wander between artworks, trying to look intelligent. Bee Visiting a Foxglove catches my attention for a moment, then Washing on a Line, with its everyday feeling of lives hung out to dry that might be a comment on recent news events. I stop for a long moment at the minimalist Empty Plant Pot in Bright Sunlight, its warm terracotta colour and challenging simplicity, which, in many ways, I like better than the vastly overblown Philadelphus Hanging Over the Fence from Next Door. Then I sit down to take a rest from looking and see it, and know this is the star of the show for me. Still Life Between Shed and Garage, I love its artless arrangement of shapes, unpretentious some critic might call it, but for what it's worth I love its water butt, looking as if it has been pinned there by the downpipe from the garage roof. Beside it a bright red can of liquid tomato fertiliser, perfect counterpoint to its bland drab green. Then two watering cans, spouts crossed in an almost heraldic gesture, and the uniform algal slab of the shed door with a glint from its padlock, in sunlight that casts an angular shadow all the way down to where the edge of the shed is softened by dogwood, false currant, and a stray tendril of honeysuckle. My eye is drawn to where Virginia creeper runs along a hedge top, then down to an abandoned broken bird feeder, First published in Prole magazine Published in collection: Telling The time |