aphrodite

Waking, the room bleached with the loveliest light, sharp low-slung rays of winter sun, I stumble down-stairs to gather up the curtains in roughly managed knots. They hang from butchers hooks twenty feet up, drawing them open or shut is no real solution - the knotting I like, it represents an honesty with the calico from which they're hewn - a rough and basic cloth which diffuses light rather than stops it fast and through age, tatters, so revealing use. An autobiographic fabric then. I stop to regard this brittle picture. No finer etched scene could more bewitch than the sun-kissed winter garden. Skeletal, deplete of succulent summer blooms, it aches with a portent not seen in other seasons. Like my diary - here are the taut and urgent signs of the paths we've followed and those we pave.

Blind and swaying is the impotent agapanthus upon whose tall slender stalks aloft are borne it's spiky green needles where remain the cellular papery sheaths of seeds now spent. Her exotic umbels of soft blue flowers held high in summer pierce the eagerly awaited season as the architect of love pierces the hearts of those committed with his double-edged sword. The agapanthus is no stranger to loss and living, winter or spring. From the Greek 'agape' = love, and 'panthos' = flower, she is the lovers trope. Scuttling below her juvenile cousins the pretty chives with all but ochre stems tremble hysterically like granny's tea-pot hands, pitifully shaking loose the last remains to her success, wantonly gobbled where they fall by the morbid robin. Beside these wintery corpses the evergreen rosemary, dark and dense, waits patiently, growth held in check, for the spring release of her pale blue trusses. Says Ophelia: 'There's rosemary, that's for remembrance'. The rosemary does not forget. What wedding bouquet or funeral wreath is complete without the warm heady scent lent by rosemary who in these couplings affirms our loves anticipated, our loves spent.

The rambling rose, primitive wild forbear of the floribunda, whose spring-time glory is spent in one immense juvenile eruption of flower and scent, here lies dormant, it's thousand scarlet hips and quivering yellow leaves the narrative of last summer's dawn. But look, the wretched thistle leaves are spreading, veined and arrow-headed on lance-like stems, they crawl across the garden's floor. Once picked by the deceitful Aphrodite to ensnare her mortal Phaon upon it's prickles, the thistle is the fairy-tale sign of love. Look closely in spring-time and you may see the bronzen-striped and speckled wings of Aphrodite Fritillary, fluttering upon the thistle's treacherous bulbs, she deceives her wooers by emitting scents that reproduce those of other flowers.

Like the uplifting notes of garden blooms and woody things we mix in our concoctions to attract a mate, this Aphrodite stinks too but she shags the mortal and divine: Adonis, Hermes, Phaon, Zeus. I bet her tongue does not thicken to a lump or beneath her skin breaks out a subtle fire, but perhaps she is a liar.