I can remember, as quite a small boy, lying beneath a huge chestnut tree and staring up into its branches, wondering at its nascent fruitfulness, and resting not just under its presence but somehow within it. All this is part of the person I am, but, for the present, it is chiefly lost to me. I am much too busy....from Stephen Cottrell's DO nothing to change your life.
Gardening is harder labour than Jacob is used to, and yet, he admits to himself, I enjoy it. His tired eyes are rested by the living green; rosefinches pluck worms from the ramped-up earth; and a black-masked bunting, whose song sounds like clinking cutlery, watches from the empty cisternfrom David Michell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
The picture is another from Buxton's Pavilion Gardens - anyone want to name the plant?
2 comments:
So, how are you finding "Jacob de Zoet"?
Early days yet - just past p 100 but I'm enjoying it, the interaction of E & W is usually fascinating (never having been further east than Saudi), will see how it turns out. First David Mitchell I've read but prob not the last!
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