view, planning, carpets

Beside the sea side 3. Chimneys  made for seagulls.

Some people plan gardens from scratch, others let the design grow like, well, like a garden. I belong unashamedly to the hap hazard school. Try this, try that, see what happens. Something happens. It works. It doesn't work. So try something else. Today a permanent, earthenware barbecue, which serves as an oven as well as a grill, is to be  delivered.  It is of traditional Burmese design, beautifully simple, less imposing  and less presumptuous than those domed metal jobs.  It is to replace a stack of bricks on which improvised or sometimes disposable barbecues  are placed . Somehow it never realized the barbecue dream which has haunted me for  years.  But what to do with the loose bricks? They are fine, flat pavers left over from the little terrace where we sit. I could stack them up somewhere out of the way. But wait a moment. Under the hedge to the left of the entrance is a section of hedge under which nothing grows because of the hedge roots. It is an ugly bare strip aching for something to cover it. The bricks, placed side by side, fit the space perfectly. And better they support flower pots. And, of flower pots, full now with flowers and grasses, we have too many on the other side of the entrance. Instantly there is a new dimension to the garden, which, without the incoming barbecue, would never have been thought of.

In The High Street is an oriental  carpet shop, which I pass nearly every day. Stacks of carpets cover the floor and others carpets hang from the walls. Today the door is open, and as I pass, a woolly, cottony, thready smell emerges, not musty but almost musty, the smell of woven carpet.