Turnsole

The gardener was digging in the walled garden when Louisa passed through the gate, tracing with her fingers its intricate metal work, oak leaves studded with acorns. The autumn sun was on his back and his muscles bulged in rolled-up shirt sleeves.

She thought, ‘To be pretty for you I have dropped two seeds of turnsole in the dark of both eyes’. Indeed, she had picked a handful of Indian heliotrope to place in a jar of water, a subject for her latest still life. The blue flowers were the colour of his eyes.

‘It’s a fine morning for digging,’ she said. ‘Has the robin visited yet?’

‘Aye, that he has.’

He was a man of few words, focused on his work. He nodded in acknowledgement. Louisa was disappointed but tenacious. For now, she was content with dreaming of those arms around her waist.

Kim M. Russell, 11th September 2023

Image by Ghulam Khairul Bashar on Unsplash

It’s Monday, we’re at the dVerse Poets Pub, and we’re dabbling in Prosery with Sanaa, American poet Isabel Duarte Gray and a line from her poem ‘Garden’: “To be pretty for you I have dropped two seeds of turnsole in the dark of both eyes.”

This is the line we must include in a piece of prose of 144 words, in which we may change the punctuation but may not insert words anywhere in the given line.

53 thoughts on “Turnsole”

  2. I absolutely love love this! Especially; “Indeed, she had picked a handful of Indian heliotrope to place in a jar of water, a subject for her latest still life. The blue flowers were the colour of his eyes.” Sigh … thank you so much for writing to the prompt! ❤️❤️❤️

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      2. I do too! It’s one of my favourites from childhood. I loved the Yorkshire dialect scattered through the book, Dickon and the robin. I wanted to be Mary Maddox, but only in Yorkshire.

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      1. I love the flowers being the colour of his eyes – and the challenge of trying to win the attention of someone so indifferent. Wonderfully done!

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      2. I love the flowers being the colour of his eyes – and the challenge of trying to win the attention of someone so indifferent. Wonderfully done!

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  18. Ahou, the gardener cometh. You fit the prompt line is sooo very well. Mine was an afterthought, I had written with a wrong line and had to change, even delete a few words to make it make the grade.
    Oh yes, we have a Muscovy duck that visits our front yard every morning, around ten. The lawn is shaded and then in the afternoon she goes across he street where the shade has gone. At night she has a nest, with some eggs above the neighbor’s garage, in an upstairs window box.
    ..

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    1. I love it when birds visit, Jim, and that you are visited by a Muscovy duck. We have robins that visit, once a swan, and magpies come regularly. And, of course, owls.

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