Musing in June

"How long, thought Eliza, since I have walked in a garden in the evening? She looked through the deeply set iron gate, so narrow and dark in the hollow of the garden wall, and wondered whether or not she would lift the latch and walk in among Olivia's carefully grown flowers...... She opened the gate and walked in.

Down the long paths Eliza walked, where Olivia's delphiniums bore themselves with a pallor and reticence in the night - their blue quenched of its burning. The evening was so still and hot that all colour had soaked into the air except where a point of land, far out to sea, was the daytime blue of a pale delphinium; absurd as a picture of a desert and as silly as it was lovely in the night. Droves of irises were grey-winged, lost in the evening; peonies were white shells round crowns as dark as moss now, only in the daytime golden, and their scent past sweetness. Not a flower scent, but beyond that. A dark scent. A tree of lilac, a broody and exotic white hen, plumed and perfumed, Eliza passed and the nearly sulphurous depths of scent where lupins grew. All colour was lost, soaked into the darkness, breathed out in scent, given to the night, given to Eliza as she walked along, her mind held in an animal delight both sharp and languorous."

- extract from 'Full House' by Molly Keane.

the illustration by Angela Barrett  is from the dust jacket of Susan Hill's book 'Through The Garden Gate' which in turn has a magical chapter entitled 'The Night Garden'.