Since I started embroidering flowers again, two noteworthy events have occurred: I began planting bulbs and reading and listening to stories set in gardens. After the year when all the plants had dried up, along with my weary heart at the time, I had not touched the earth again: I only admired the wild nature on my walks, which I had wisely learned not to put off. Perhaps it is precisely thanks to this return to the soul of the world that I am able to pay attention to that voice whispering advice to me. But I fear that now my attempt to flush it out will end up withering away (because of my need to explain it, rather than simply recognising it and peacefully living with it). Yesterday, for example (the yesterday when I wrote this piece, more than a month ago), I started reading a book (Elizabeth’s Garden, by Elizabeth Von Arnim), whose review contained words such as delight, romance, beauty and happiness.

I had read that it was organised like a garden diary, and I was already prepared to note down quotes and emulate the author by choosing the first words of my own hanging garden diary. I started on page 1 and felt the little voice in my head waver, despite an interesting idea in the first few lines. I stopped to listen to it, but then I continued. It had already realised that it wasn’t worth it: it had already understood that the image of the protagonist that was emerging exuded anything but poetry: it certainly wouldn’t guide me along paths of delight. And it communicated this to me through a subtle feeling of disappointment mixed with annoyance. It had already sensed the presumptuousness that I unfortunately found intolerable in Thoreau, despite his fame. But I had decided to press on. After just a few pages, the verdict:

<<Now that word has spread that I spend my days with a book in my hand, everyone is convinced that I am, to put it politely, overly eccentric, and there is not a soul left who has seen me cooking or baking. Why on earth would I cook when I have someone who does it for me? As for sewing, the maids are much faster than me and more skilled at hemming sheets, not to mention needlework and embroidery: for me, they are a ploy of the Devil to prevent fools from applying themselves to the pursuit of wisdom.>>

I imagined writing a letter to Elizabeth, but she passed away more than thirty years before I was born. Since I too was guilty of presumption in the terms I would have used in my imaginary letter, I punished myself by reading the book to the end. But then I decided to return it to the library.

To name but two, Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte embroidered. Excellently. There is a section of the world, however, that is pompously convinced that manual activities fill the void in the brain.