A sweetness wafts amidst the smell of tea with honey and the last of the hot cross buns, toasted and lathered luxuriously with good butter, a vice of mine and Nessie’s, our dairy farming DNA to blame, my mother’s family always says.
A vase of roses, still wet from yesterdays rain that continued through the night again, sits drying on my desk under the warmth of my lamp that needs to be on in daylight hours when I am sat here, so small and tucked away the old farm manager’s office is, now mine. The stand of giant Ash shielding the room from the northern sun which I am grateful for in the height of summer but as the lover of light filled rooms that I am, a youth spent in ‘Queenslander’s’ at fault for that, I must settle for that of the lamp and what light makes it through the trees but it gives a warm glow to an already cosy room that one can nestle into and write.
I lavish this room with rich textiles, warm leather and timber, a woollen rug and blankets and photos of Moorfield over the years and those who called her home; indoor plants, books on gardens the world over and botanical art, botanical stationary, botanical everything. I plan wallpaper for these triple brick walls with something dark and moody but alive with plants and animals, and colour. I embrace the smallness and dimness of the space, the way it feels like a shell one can disappear into and be separate from the world and all its worries, big enough only to house my stories, sketches and I, about the garden beyond these walls and beyond our gates too and the happiness it all brings me.
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