Plants

Lacking a garden, she substitutes scavenging for growing and tending.

She is convinced this is a normal reaction to springtime.

She feels like Pippi Longstocking, thing-finder, except her things to be found are abandoned by plants.

She gazes at bluebells and forget-me-nots and searches on the roadside for plant debris, anything shed.

She attempts to collect stray petals with sticky-back plastic in the dark, but ends up with cheeseybugs, crawling unnoticed in her bag.

She does not intend to consume the flowers, but to press them between books and eventually, when they are dry and fragile, to add them to collages.

The weekend arrives, and she marvels at the beautiful colours of the jade vine and the powderpuff plant at the University of Oxford Botanic Gardens.

While working on a Friday afternoon, she is sent on an induction tour for new staff members at the University of Southampton and finds out what trees are planted where and why. She wonders if they should have planted more lime trees as originally planned.

On that tour, she explores the botanical garden (Valley Garden), not really looking out for greater crested newts and rare bees, but pondering another new staff member's words, that the garden has potential.

On the bus, on the way home, she watches a woman with white hair clutching a sprig of green leaves.

The weekend arrives again, and she walks what feels like the entire length of London with a group of people, taking photos. She lines her jacket with red tulip petals and ox-eye daisies and when she arrives home, she finds that she sort of wants to read about Bob's Biblical Garden.