Southern, White and Admirable

Two pronged pine needles wistfully spiralled groundward from a sparse canopy and fell with damp clicks onto the ground besides a dozen or so tables at a cafe; the smell of french-blended coffee twinned with distant irises gently flushed the noses of the caffeine-bound.


Following the eye, from the level of the consumer, one sequentially ingests a broken landscape, compartmentalised by order of natural merit. In the man-made foreground a carpet of dimpled asphalt embraces the generosity of the midday sun whilst a lateral belt of cross-hatched fencing, punctuated with overhanging trays of multi-coloured perennials and shrubs accepts the mid-ground; the flowers were a trade boosting idea conjured up by the cafe owner one evening when business was oppressively slow. Sharp, angular elbows sank onto the bar, palm bases propped up cheek bones and frowning occurred over the sadness of a half eaten meal. An artistic attempt created by the owner when forlorn lettuce leaves were raised to met the lines posed by the fence.


As the eye constructs the backdrop out of columns of tightly packed, olivaceous pines and a swimming pool sky (high up on the order of natural merit), a lone butterfly of the Nymphalidae family may noiselessly interrupt the gaze, flickering in front of the sky, then bobbing down to pine level, fence and then asphalt before alighting her blueberry and cream sprinkled wings on an unknown fleshy shrub, planted with passion last year, much to the revived glee of the onlooking cafe owner.