Over the Garden Wall

Gardening last September, I looked up and saw a yellow crane directly parallel to my garden wall. I saw how the moss on the top of the wall became an acid green line defining its limit. The grasses growing straw-like from its red bricks reached upwards towards the buttercup yellow of the crane, which, instead of looking oppressive and industrial, seemed fragile and almost beautiful. The whole scene became a geometrical feast of colour – the hollyhocks leaning with their crazy pink, rigid grey/black telephone poles echoed by a livid piece of sunlit driftwood in the garden, triangular gables and rectangular windows were softened by the rampant growth and random colour of the plants. And all this space complicated by the crisscross curves of connecting telephone wires occasionally glinting in the sun. from being, in my own mind,an uninteresting thing, the crane seemed to become something almost exotic, swinging in the air and having a magical conversation.