45
I seem drawn to simplicity this summer. Specifically, children’s books. I’m listening to recordings of Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories and today I read “Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth” by Oliver Jeffers. These beautiful drawings of Earth and people, words about diversity and kindness, me in the suddenly-arrived August heat, sweating, breathing in the rough, tickly smell in my balcony tomato plant jungle. It is written to a baby, and even if it’s mostly about Earth as a planet in the universe, we need to place ourselves somewhere. Earth is this story that we create together. Where the story is set is a great place to start – even for someone like me, more prone to Earth-ward musings than contemplations about Space. It was a lovely read. Another story of Earth is the evolution of life, and how remnants of this history is still around. To remind us. In one of the greenhouses, in the massive greenhouse complex at the Meise botanic garden, they had planted remnants of this past, curated a walk through the evolutionary history of Earth. There was something so appealing with this sensory lesson, the smell and feel of the air among the ferns, palm trees and succulents that found their form and stuck with it.
Photo: 1. Succulent in Plantentuin Meise / Jardin Botanique Meise, Brussels, Belgium, September 2017, 2. View of my balcony, August 2020. Posted on Instagram August 11, 2020.
Katja Malmborg 