Temple in the garden

Pilgrimage at the garden...
In winter, in February during the recent years, it is done hastily, behind the frosted windowpane, under the grey light of the sunset –typical for the northern part of the country. In summer, in July, at ease, I go out at the balcony or at the back yard itself, offering my regards to the trees. First, there is a pear-tree which my grandparents found in full glory when they came as refugees from Eastern Thrace, some 80 years ago. Its age exceeds the 110 years. To them it was a pale compensation for the looms they left behind. The pears used to be plenty and sweet of a variety that it is not grown anymore, after multiple modifications of taste that occurred through the decades. Twenty years ago, it broke and lost half of its size, but still it gives flowers and fruits. They are now soft and tasteless, no-one eats them, except the races of sparrows that have their own taste and historiography. The pine tree was planted by me, when I was 9. It never became very tall, since the shadow of the pear kept it submissive to the gravity of the past. But it developed green and healthy, and now they are almost competing which one will get the first morning light. The vine tree is replaced by a new one. The kheimonanthos (winter-flower) bush is now green but its time of glory is winter, during which it gives its dry yellow flowers, pale, as if composed with wax, paper and scent. The perfume is unique and like nothing else I could name. There are few more and there are also some absences, trunks and leaves not there anymore: the bay tree, the apricot tree, the plum tree and the pomegranate. Sometimes I walk in the garden in dreams, it is wide, long, and colourful; since I possess there the age of desire, the realistic dimensions of a subjective memory. The pomegranate had the best flowers, the vine tree the longest stories and the bay leaves the eternity of a clear shape.