Dear friend,
The body of the laptop is cold to the touch. My wrists, resting on the smooth aluminium, crackle with electrons as a slight breeze rustles the feathered heads of the tall ornamental grasses in our garden. A lone magpie hops from prong to prong of a defunct rooftop television aerial.
Our place has a forgotten satellite dish bolted to the wall. Removing it is one of those jobs that’s so low on my list of priorities, it barely registers and is forgotten the moment it arises.
I watch the steam from my neighbour’s boiler as it drifts and floats on the coolness of the February chill.
All expectations of snow have now been laid aside.
I nearly let my lemon tree die.
In the winters, we usually keep it indoors and take it out over the warmer summer months. This winter, something strange rose up within. I’d pass the tree and think about it. Maybe it can live outside for the winter? Our houseplants love the kitchen, and there’s maybe one or two too many for the space.
The lemon tree was doing okay until we had a spell of frost. That’s when I ought to have seen they were unhappy, but it wasn’t until January that the poor tree was so obviously suffering that we brought them in.
It was a sad sight, overgrown with lush green weeds in marked contrast to the fading and dead lemon tree leaves.
Apologies poured forth as I cleaned up and fed the soil, cutting away the dead wood. Thankfully, some leaves have enough chlorophyll to sustain life, and so it looks like they will pull through.
We sat with the tree, giving our attention.
But why?
Why ignore something as important as a living being—one made dependent on us for its well-being?
They’re here now, a metre and a half from my seat at the kitchen table, under the ticking of the clock and the tiny jet engine of the central heating rumbling in the background.
But we do ignore important things.
It’s easy to get distracted by the world of our senses, our cravings and desires. Not to mention the sticky thoughts that loop round in our minds.
The flame that consumes the candle.
The dreamer awakening from the dream.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey