Gardens & art

The weathermen reckon today is supposed to be the warmest day of the year so far. All I can say, I look out at the heavy clouds overhead & think rain is more likely. I’m certainly not about to rush to put my washing out to dry.

Snowberry in flower

However, the milder weather is bringing the garden on. The snowberry is in flower, & such delicate white flowers. The miniature daffodils that gave me so much pleasure before we went away are now on their last legs. Fresh greenness is appearing from the hosta crowns. The apple tree almost looks white with the soft downy outer covering on the leaf buds. The hellebores (Christmas roses) are now standing erect, even if, as ever, their faces look down. The white camelia is its usual disappointment. The flowers appears but as soon as it rains, which is most days, the petals turn brown. I’m much more excited by the pink camelia which is full of buds at the moment. That tends to hold its colour better.

I love spring. I feel it’s a season of so much hope. My spirits tend to rise with the hope.

Yesterday I had a very young carer come. The Fox asked me to describe her to him.

She’s only about 20. It struck me just what a poor job some schools do for their children. She’s quite a bright girl with a good anarchic streak. I was showing her the brochure we’d been sent by the cruise company. One of the trips was to Grieg’s house. She’d never heard of him. She’d apparently done a project on Croatia at school & yet she’d never seen a picture of Croatia. All she could remember was that Croatia is shaped like a croissant. I dug out our photos from our trip to Split in 2014. Then I showed her some of our pictures from our last holiday in France. She hadn’t heard of Picasso, Matisse or Renoir, though she was impressed by what she could see of Renoir’s painting of the farmhouse at Cagnes-sur-Mer. Needless to say when she saw the path with hands in Juan-les-Pins, the names there meant nothing to her.

The Fox asked how many such artists did I know at my carer’s age. I was forced to admit I didn’t know a lot about Matisse, but I’m sure I had come across Picasso & Renoir. My art knowledge tended more towards the Renaissance artists, Michelangelo, Leonardo etc., the odd Dutch artist such as Vermeer & Rembrandt, the odd English artist such as Constable & Gainsborough. As for Grieg, the first record I ever bought was music by Grieg. I loved, & still do love, his “Peer Gynt” & his “Piano Concerto in A Minor”.

I can’t help feeling that this carer, along with many of her contemporaries must be at a social disadvantage without such knowledge. Admittedly she could probably teach me a thing or two about pop music of which I admit I’m very ignorant. Surely schools should educate children far wider than what is needed to get them through exams & gain some qualifications, but that seems to be all they do these days.

Maybe it just comes down to the fact, at school, & it was a privileged grammar school, I was like a sponge ready to drink up every bit of knowledge I could find. If I wasn’t taught it at school, I would be delving into books at the library to find out about all sorts of things, going to concerts (Manchester where I grew up is the home of the Hallé orchestra).

Maybe, if she becomes my regular carer I will have to take on the teacher role & open up some of these, as now for her, secret pleasures that can enrich life so much.