Most people see colours, but sometimes I think that I see them more clearly.
I’ve worked at the long timber bench at the farmhouse for the past two hours, pressing crepe paper petals into shapes so they’re ready to form into flowers. Gompholobium grandiflorum. Large Wedge-pea. The petals, in four shades of yellow, are lined up neatly in rows.
Saffron, lemon, amber and gold.
When a gust of wind rattles the window and sneaks through a gap in the frame, scores of petals fly into the air and fall to my feet like sunbeams. As I collect the petals and put them into a shoebox, I imagine Gran at her old kitchen table, the surface obscured by reams of crepe paper.
‘Don’t be so particular, Sapphie,’ she’d say, as I fussed over shade and sequence. ‘It’s the imperfections that make the flowers perfect.’
I pack away supplies—glues and tapes, forestry wire and scissors, the yellow-coloured crepe I’ve cut into strips and the moss-green pieces I’ll shape for the foliage. A screech shoots through the silence. Possums in the red gum. I wish they’d eat there every night and leave the orange trees alone…
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