The Sea Between

by Elizabeth Smither. I got a few novels out of the library recently as my diet of garden, food and newspaper reading seems to be rather a thin meal for my brain. I read whenever I'm feeding my daughter to sleep. Makes for an enjoyable time instead of getting titchy if she doesn't settle quickly.

Back when we rented a house which came furnished with a tv, I saw a programme about a NZ artist called Michael Smither. As it looked at his history, I watched with some fascination as he described his time as a young married man in Central Otago, with several small children, painting and poor in a cold (read literally and often constantly freezing if you know the area in winter) bach. There was a painting he did of his wife Elizabeth looking exhausted and pained with the children. She was bloody furious with him cos she could have done with some help round the house and with the children, not a painting of her looking and feeling like shite. Being the all round nice guy, he then waltzed off with some other woman, leaving Elizabeth to raise the babies. At the time I thought I'd heard of Elizabeth Smither the poet but couldn't remember anything specific about her work. Well now I'm getting a taste of her work and I like it a great deal.

Really nice to be reading fiction again. It rained several times today, so the novel reading while my apprentice slept was an excellent alternative to housework. After I'd read for a while I pondered what I would do with the small garden strip on front of our bedroom, currently home to a little bit of parsley and one comfrey plant. I want to deliberately get that comfrey plant to spread and invade the rest of the strip. And I also planted some more calendula seeds this afternoon which I will plant out amongst the comfrey in a few weeks.

Will I look back in later life and wish I'd cleaned more or read more?