Saturday (July)

July, as when it’s too cold to do much Saturday gardening but shift potted succulents into brief sunlight, or prune the sky-high rose briars. When lunch is soup, thickened with pearl barley. When Cootamundra wattle flowers heavily, the boughs resting on the rooftops they usually shade. When afternoon reads like a magniloquent poem by a central European, interspersed with ark-ark-ark of crows outside. When windows say it’s cold enough for hail.  When you sit where the cat sits in the warmest room of the house. When nightfall promises kitchen conversations, a glass of Margaret River red to warm the heart.