An Enchanted Place

listen

∗

can you hear them?

echoing

∗

fleeting peals of laughter

the joyful reflections of childhood games

of long forgotten adventures

∗

held in the space’s fabric

memories existing in gossamer insubstantiality

absorbed by the earth

food for the

∗

soul

The garden of our new house has a couple of features that immediately sold the place to me. There is both a tree-house and a summerhouse. And there are numerous signs that they were both favourite sites for children’s games in the past – including wax crayon scribbles and abandoned toys.

As the youngest person now living in the house is my seventeen-year-old nephew, the garden no longer echoes with the sounds of children’s laughter. But the tree house and summer house both remain great places to photograph.

And to dream…

The summerhouse, now generally known as Pod, has become my place for writing. I can often be found sitting down at the bottom of the garden, with a cup of tea, a notepad, and a far away look.

Update: Since I started writing this post earlier today, we’ve had visitors – one of whom was a five-year-old boy. The garden seemed to welcome the sound of childish laughter, again. He rescued the seal (who is now called Super Seal) from the cargo netting, and before he left he insisted that I put him safely inside the tree-house for the night so he could keep warm.