Small Steps

A slight pall hangs over Leto Towers. The atmosphere is restrained. A small sadness, une petite tristesse, is just discernible to the finely tuned.

You see the Special’s pine needle wind chimes have not worked out. After several weeks work they have been consigned to history.

It started with a blaze of optimism. Mrs J even had the thought that the Kalkan Women’s Institute might be engaged to help make them and deliver them, free of charge, to our vulnerable Over 65’s inscribed We Have Not Forgotten You.

It started with a line from a poem I was composing for Facebook Group I am thinking of starting called Poetry in the New Normal. The poem was titled Ode to Pinara and contained the pleasingly (in my view) onomatopoeic lines

City of the Dead. I walk among the tumbled stones and long interred bones
Only the soft susurration of the wind in the noble pines to remind

My Beloved was moved. And then with that mountain moving determination that is her very core she decided that she was going to make a wind chime to replicate the gentle sigh of the wind in the pines.

I pointed out that we were surrounded by pine trees doing a very good job already.

“It will not be for us” she replied with a firmness of tone that brooked no dissent

So five weeks and much effort later it has ended in disappointment. So back to the nested trinket baskets.

Anyway we are both fully engaged during daylight hours working on our Corona Garden. The Corona Garden will be our Lockdown Legacy.

When Seth asks ten years hence “What did you do in the Great Pandemic Grandy?” I shall be able to point and say Grandma Kim and I built this garden.

And indeed we have. We have cleared a large section of thornbushes and scrub to reveal wild fig and pomegranite trees, oak saplings and other delights. We have constructed a wildlife pond, a firepit and planted a lavender bed. For the last week I have been building steps that curve gently down from the deck to connect our Corona Garden.

I must be the only builder in Islamlar who labours to the soundtrack of Handel’s Alcina or Scipione. Although to be strictly accurate when doing the really heavy work of shifting rocks or “knocking up” a barrow of cement I usually switch to a Spotify playlist Monsters of Prog Rock.

This is a playlist Bazza shared with me after visiting to drop off some pharmaceuticals and observing

“Gi’over! You can’t fookin’ mix cement to Joan fookin’ Sutherland, yer daft Southern tosser. I’ll send yer sump’n.”

Bazza can come it quite the poet himself when he gets animated. Which, trust me, is frequently. Grudgingly though I admit that Black Sabbath is the biz when digging out rocks.

So the work goes on. Mrs J got very excited yesterday as she was able to “launch” the first plant into the pond. Our landscape man Abdullah of Beygonvil Paysaj got it for us. It is a waterborn plant called Eichhornia crassipes, but commonly known as water hyacinth. We are both new to water plants so headed for Wikipedia and read

“Eichhornia crassipes, commonly known as common water hyacinth, is an aquatic plant native to the Amazon basin, and is often a highly problematic invasive species outside its native range.”

It goes on to say amongst a lot else

“The plants also create a prime habitat for mosquitos, the classic vectors of disease, and a species of snail known to host a parasitic flatworm which causes schistosomiasis (snail fever)”

And casually drops in that “the water hyacinths were found to grow between 2 and 5 meters a day in some sites.”

Nice one Abdullah! What have you given us?

However, my fears were reduced on arising this morning, bounding down the freshly made steps and discovering that the wee floater had not grown a centimetre overnight and looked quite cute actually.

If when they end the Over 65s Lockdown our lifeless bodies are discovered covered in mosquito bites, floating dead in the water strangled by a 10 metre invasive plant species please bury us in a corner of our Corona Garden.

It will be forever England.

Have a nice weekend