Tuisitala

I have Blipped this lovely metal man before. He was one of the last things (if not the last) that K bought to add to her idiosyncratic collection of garden ornaments, before she died 6 months ago. 

Over the intervening months I have occasionally introduced some of the other garden characters to his lap and environs to make him a benevolent teller of tales.

I am particularly pleased with the way Florence the Flamingo leans over his arm.

The morning working in this garden was, as usual, a time of remembering K and thinking about our conversations about the spring blooms and the filling-out summer-flowering plants. 

We would look at gaps and wonder if they will fill naturally in summer. Maybe we need to decide on what plants we could buy, and perhaps which plants to divide and replant. I miss her. 

R - her husband - is delighted that I'm still tending their place, but he isn't a gardener. I have tried to draw him out to find out what he likes and doesn't like, but all he says is that if K liked it he'll like. So I continue to recall those discussions in years past and do the best I can.

Incidentally K and R's property is called Vailima; the same as Robert Loius Stevenson's property in Samoa. RLS was known in Samoa as Tuisitala, or the story teller. It is appropriate that this metal man does likewise.