Happy birthday, calm, sex and solace

A cup of good filter coffee accompanied by a rich and moist chocolate brownie made with Belgian chocolate.

That's how I'm celebrating Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden's centenary - it's 100 years old this year - at the busy and old style Kirstenbosch Tea Garden; in the very corner table for two, on a moody but still dry Saturday afternoon. The waitress's face says it all: I'm dead tired on my feet, it's late in the day, please don't tax me, please don't say long. [What does mine say? This is about me, not you; stay out of my way I have words to put down on the page. Or else I'll die. And dont forget to bring coffee.]

I slowly meandered up to the restaurant taking in the garden smells, and moods, and snuffled at the fynbos-rich air, picking apart the intriguing scents all intertwined with each other. I also pulled my jacket and hoody up tight and warm against my body, to ward off the cold.

Gardens have always played a crucial-interesting role in my life: They remain places that I escape too from the clautrophobia of the city environment, literally when I've lost the ability to see the wood from the trees, no pun intended.

Gardens are places of personal calm and centredness; they are also places of tears and heart searching; places where I have read and written, where I have walked dogs, my own and others', seduced and celebrated lovers, and where I've sought out and then keenly watched the lines and erratic graph of my own horizon. I have also often run into gardens seeking clarity and direction relating to my life's calamities. Finding solace.

My sexaulity, and my sexualness, have also been wrapped up in gardens. But that's another post - probably long winding and intense,  also maybe intriguing - for another time. But only to be written after I've grown the balls, my balls, to be an honest writer, a real writer, as opposed to a PR writer of my own life.

Most, most importantly I have gone to gardens to seek my creator; I've never been disappointed, God exists for me in Nature.