Day 15

It is so difficult to get up when it is still dark and cold!  I dutifully did many exercises and then ran 1.5 miles (2.4km) on the treadmill, as the roads were icy this morning and we slithered from our cars to the gym building, the black asphalt shiny and treacherous.  But the sun was shining on my unwilling heart and when there is all this blue bright sky after a few days of rain you can't help but feel more cheerful.

My Firstfriend turned the same age as me today.  (Although it is already afternoon on the day after her birthday in Melbourne where she lives on the other side of the world.)  We met when we were both only a year old, our mothers' meeting forging the two of us (and our mothers) into the best of friends.

A little older, so close, more than sisters, our wanderings took us all over Pinelands together.  Our mothers let us roam freely, often accompanied by my lolloping dog Timmy.  We explored the golf course near my house, roller-skated up and down steep hills we found.  We told everyone we were twins, although they may have been suspicious of this fact when we also admitted to having been born five months apart!  Also that one had lovely dark wavy hair and the brownest of eyes, while the other possessed a short shock of straight blonde hair and blue eyes.

We lived a privileged happy childhood in a suburb where groups of children played cricket on the playing fields near Trish's house, and in the gardens along the block, huge games of hide and seek, or some other game made up on the spot.  Our artistic leanings were the same, and we spent hours drawing, or colouring in coveted colouring-in books of ballet dancers, with crayons from the big Crayola box that one of us had received for a birthday, the one with about 500 colours, including the prized gold, silver and copper!

She was my first love beyond my family and still holds that place in my heart.   We are entwined together with those bright threads of connection from the old days, long ago now.

 

Best friends Trish and Anne at Dalebrook, circa 1961

My twin is also a grandmother, of darling Poppy

Orchids are exquisite.  We are fascinated with them because their voluptuous waxy petaled forms are so resonant of various things: birds, animals, insects.  But they are also bewitching to us because that is their modus operandi, employing seduction and deception to get their way.  Some orchids pretend they are nectar-bearing flowers to attract pollinating bees, while others actually mimic bees in flight hoping to "incite territorial combat  that results in pollination" according to a National Geographic article, although it stated "male bees" which doesn't sound right, although apparently male Carpenter bees do exhibit this behaviour.  (My knowledge of bees comes from keeping honey bees, but there are many different kinds of bees which do not necessarily live in colonies run by a queen.  My idea of a male bee therefore is a drone.  In autumn it is horrifyingly fascinating to watch my worker bees sting the drones, drag them out and throw them over the edge of the landing board to die.)

I have had two orchids for a few years, although neither of them have blooms right now, and so their pots are filled with just these rather flat, strange large succulent leaves.  It is always miraculous and exciting when I see that there is a new little stalk slowly emerging, with all that promise of delicate white furlings contained within it.