Lamma Island, 9:00AM – Sunny.

Entry 147

Back from the land of slate, steeples, and country estates.

Back to a shoe-box apartment where some cracks let the sun shine in, walls insulated by paperbacks.

Back with a renewed determination to write. 

Buoyed by friendship. Held by the hills. Warmed by the work. 

A month later, the garden is greener. 

Another thirty days later, and I’ll have left this garden for a new place with a patio where the neighbors will have to climb a fence if they wish to exhume my plants. Curry. Lemon. Garlic. All unpopular for some reason. The lengths an ego will go to assert itself - this is the lesson from clearing the land, laying the gravel, and inviting others to garden here with me. What I got was a children’s trampoline plonked in the gravel and a line of bricks in the soil marking out his territory. Many have suggested I slash the trampoline. In this way the garden has also been a lesson in restraint.

Soon, at my new house, the farmhouse, I will be free to fling eggshells and coffee grounds wherever I want. And I will grow mountains of garlic. 

When I tell the landlady I found the farmhouse, ten minutes away, further into the hills, a stand-alone house in a valley out of view, she nods and asks is it because of him? Her eyes move up to his balcony railing lined with empty gin bottles. He doesn’t drink. But if the light shines through the bottles he’s picked up from the refuse collection point, it brings good energy. She and I say nothing. He is not her tenant. We only laugh. And that is enough. I am going to miss this landlady. The mirror is still aimed at her door.