It's Still Life

My gran had a small farm with a garden, small enough to keep a winter pantry supplied, large enough to keep her friends alive, and she had 2 goats, unnamed because as she put it, Would you name a rug or a chair – Well, no, so why would I name a goat – to which I said, But you can’t sit on a goat, to which she said, Of course you can, but anyway me being me, I named the goat, and called one Goat and the other Goats – Goat and Goats.

Gran also had a cow with constant mastitis, and when I asked the cow what its name was, it was then and there after called Moo, but the chickens, well there were too many chickens to name, and they flitted about so fast, pecking one another (Gran said it was a hierarchy thing), so I never named the chickens, probably because you can’t sit on a chicken.

That was the summer Gran said to me, It’s about time you came into this world, and not knowing what she was on about, I just kept quiet and kept peeling potatoes because that was my job – and she said, What’s that plant to your right over there … and I said it’s rosemary, to which she said, And what do you think of when you smell it, and I said “Roast chicken,” and she had a long twig of thyme in her hand, she pulled down the stem and the leaves tumbling from her hand into a black bowl that Dad claimed had a radioactive glaze, and she said, What does this scent remind you of”, and I said “Roast chicken.”

Perhaps I should mention that we ate a lot of those chickens, which might be why Gran didn’t name them.

Anyway, that was the summer that I learned about burning rosemary, the strength of citrus, thyme and sage, how to collect mustard seed, why there was chamomile growing with echinacea, mugwort and milk thistle, feverfew, alliums, and garlic braided above the woodburner, and how to make valerian tea when Grandad was having one of his nervous moments.

I remember Dad standing at the big bedroom window upstairs, looking down at us while we deadheaded Nigella blossoms, and I waved at him but it was as if he was looking somewhere else, somewhere between the folds and gaps that were my childhood, and in the meantime Mum just couldn’t fathom why I was being taught to grow weeds…

Words: 447/ 2 minutes to read. Written for Sunday’s Six Sentence Story “Farm”. Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Imagery and prose ©Misky 2023.