My garden had become an embarrassment. But nature still offered up a perfect summer moment, filling the sky with clouds of dancing seeds…
It was a late July day and it was blissful, even for a shade-grown hayfever sufferer like me.
Patches of mellow sunlight ebbed across our neglected garden in a lazy-river procession and the sky above was animated by a flurry of dandelion seeds.
There were so many of them, probably dislodged from the vast, disused playing field at the end of our road, that I went outside just to appreciate the spectacle.
They danced and swooped in random patterns but when you watched them closely they seemed to show signs of manic purpose. Occasionally, great clusters of seeds would rise up into view with a singular purpose, like a flock of birds evicted by tidal waters.
Higher into the sky, and in defiance of a gentle south westerly zephyr, I saw a group of seeds criss-crossing urgently, like a distant swarm of dog–fighting aircraft.
Visiting local ruins
A red star cabbage palm lay on the patio, having been knocked off its perch several days earlier by a strong gust of wind. It would have been the work of a minute to go outside and reposition it.
But if I did that job then I’d have been morally implicated in all the other labour required to restore order to the landscape.
Damp refuse sacks sagged next to our coal shed. Each one was stuffed with a carbonara of bindweed and lawn clippings, and each served as a reminder that I’d spent a grand total of 90 minutes tending to the area, all season.
The lawn was embroidered with a pattern of white clover and the flower beds were shabby. A single yellow dahlia stood alone like a signpost. Its compatriots must have been flattened by the recent strong winds or by a fox scaling the fence.
Even the little patio at the rear of the garden had become a multicoloured junkyard. My daughter’s paddling pool lay marooned and partially deflated on a pile of plastic doodads, like a liferaft washed ashore after a shipwreck.
The paddling pool sits like a liferaft washed ashore after a shipwreck
In the spring, my wife had waterproofed a wooden play kitchen and deposited it outside, with the hope that it might enjoy a second life as a mud-pie factory. It remained underused and was now warping and flaking blue paint.
Still, none of it detracted from the uncomplicated tranquility of that early afternoon.
The grass pollen levels were mercifully low and the temperature remained at a steady 21°c. The sun peeked over the roof, winking between the clouds. Plump bumblebees swooped drunkenly into view.
The dandelion seeds continued to skitter and drift, like clouds of soap bubbles blown from one of those little plastic wands. Some of them continued to ascend until they became invisible to the human eye.
Trajectory calculation in a particle system
I returned to my work at the dining table and to a thought that I’d been pondering earlier.
One of the dining room windows was open and I’d been wondering about the statistical likelihood that one of the thousands of seeds would find its way to, and then through, that 5-inch vertical gap.
Surely, given enough time and unchanging climatic conditions, nature’s algorithm was bound to send one my way?
Later, from the corner of my eye I was convinced that I witnessed a seed miraculously drift through the narrow gap.
After finishing my work I went to verify the phenomenon, but I couldn’t find any trace of the seed.
I was left to wonder if the draft sucked it down through the floorboards into the darkness of the foundations, or whether there was ever anything there in the room at all.
