29. Sizzling hot

June 30th.

Sizzling hot and I walk up the hill. The path is grey-yellow dust, the cicadas harmonise, the nightingales compete with their exotic, rising bubble and jug. Not even midday and the heat is searing. Emile`s white van is coming over the ridge, bumping and jerking, one door is almost off its hinges and fixed at an angle to the cill with a blue rope. He is never in shirt sleves; always a jerkin of sorts over long sleeves. It makes me sweat just to look at him; but I have freckles and sunspots all over my arms and he probably hasn’t.

Now I am at a higher level, where I can survey the grand plan, the lay out of my infant garden. I’m on the ledge of one plateau, looking critically down to the next to see if my field is taking on some shape and design.. I have planted one C. leylandii, that hated, suburban, hedging tree ; so that as it pushes up to the sky it marks the southernmost corner of the plot. When I’m dead and pushing up, I hope , another sort of tree, somewhere, this Cypress will be far less than a quarter of the way to its full and magnificent stature.

As I scramble down, Emile’s van is still there; he is checking fencing and knocking a few posts straight after the great livestock migration. Marie is huffing and puffing after her walk up to join him. She is in a bright blue pinny again and her knees are purple.
“I'm going home to have a cup of tea”, I grin, “very thirst quenching.”
“Phtt! Cat’s piss”, Emile grunts, “you’re welcome to it.”
Marie waves me down the hill, shrugging her shoulders and tittering.