a night garden

you may wish to picnic or meditate or just doze on the camomile scented lawn or find a secluded nook for a tender moment with your lover.

it may sometimes rain in this nocturnal place but the protective canopy is such that any raindrops are warm and perfumed and so tiny that they merely moisten your skin.

the lawns glow softly, lit by gentle beams that randomly play, ebb and flow like waves skimming a tropical beach.

each tree in the garden is illuminated upwards by small fairy spotlights carefully secreted between the roots and on looking higher up, strings of pastel lights embroider the branches like raindrops in a mighty web.

at the centre of this magical place, a weeping willow cries into the lake as it stands alone and stooped inside the circle created by a single straight beam of white light from high above.

the lake is a stretch of deceptively dark water. in the shadows, its surface is glassylike and seemingly solid. beneath this solidity lurks many resting, sulky fish hiding and invisible but each sudden fishy move is captured by concealed sensors and a kaleidoscope of fins and scales captures the lights in a sudden hallucinogenic rainbow.

this movement-sensing light activity extends to the rest of the garden as everything that flies or crawls or jumps or wriggles is captured in a momentary flash. even a snail, as it makes its way down the path, will flash on and off with a pleasing strobing light. damselflies flicker blue and green above the water and a rabbit punches light into the ground with its back legs and its twitchy nose strikes up like a flaring match.

circles of mushrooms stand stiff and silent having pushed their little fists through the soil. they must be puffballs because each cloud of spores takes on the look of a small firework display.

flowers of every shape, size and colour, that would normally be asleep, will sway and dance and their rhythms stretches away into the distance, like some crazy floral Mexican wave saying ‘bye bye’. ‘bye bye’ to the footpath that leads you from the path, from the lights, from the dream and back to the real world.