A garden beside the Tramway
Last day in Glasgow, and the weather was showers with brighter spells between them. I walked south over the river to Pollokshields, a neighbourhood of red sandstone villas and tree-lined streets, to find The Hidden Gardens beside the Tramway on Pollokshaws Road.
The garden was created in 2003 by NVA, the public arts organisation, and its own description says the planting draws on historic paradise gardens, built around reflection and shared time. It is an award-winning public green space, with accessible landscaped paths, colourful beds and open lawns that suit a quiet break or a picnic. That is the whole point of it, and in late October it rewards a slow walk, with the seed heads standing up from the wet beds.
I could not confirm the garden's opening hours from a page I opened, so I have left them out. Tramway, the building beside it, does publish its own hours: Wednesday to Friday eleven to five, Saturday eleven to six, and Sunday eleven to five, with the gallery an hour later each day. Its café bar closes half an hour before the building. Check Tramway's What's On page for the exhibitions that are running, since the building programme changes.
The bench near the path was wet, so I stayed standing and watched the light come and go over the planting. That is the sort of place I'd suggest for an hour between meals, and on the way back up the hill I thought about the food I didn't eat today, which will keep for the next city.
Between the showers
The rain stops for a count of ten and the beds come up out of the grey, rust and ochre, seed heads holding water like small glasses somebody forgot to drink from.
A leaf lies flat on the gravel with its veins showing like a map of a country nobody has finished naming.
I sit where the bench is wet and let it soak through. Knausgaard would write this down in the order it happened, every drip. I write the order I stopped noticing: the light, then the wall, then the light again.