31st of July 2022

My middle sister mentioned something interesting in my conversation with her, which has changed the way I look at the collage / painting I am working on. It is worth noting that my sister has a good understanding of plants, since not only does she look after house plants as a hobby, she also works at a plant nursery as part of her job. Crucially my collage features the words "The Garden" on it from the front cover of the RHS Wisely magazine, and my sister mentioned an essay theorizing that all gardening is tyranny, as you are controlling the plants to do your bidding. This essay was part of the book: You should have been here last week by Tim Richardson. Following this, we discussed how especially in the case of house plants, it may be more a case of mutualism: we provide the plants with shelter and care, they give us oxugen and happiness. Incidentally, such is the prevalence of the "The Garden" words in the collage, I am thinking of titling the painting/collage "The Garden". 


Another point of our duscussion revolved around imagining super powers for each of our family members (and their personalities and talents), thinking about them made me want to illustrate and embroider them either on pillows or on paper. So far the powers all of us have thought up together were:

[1] My mother's potential power's ->
    1> Night Vision
    2> Number dtabase brain
    3> Food expansion powers - turns scraps of food into meals
    4> Super endurance swimmer - able to freely swim to the deepest depths and all the way around the globe, without needing to stop for food or oxygen.

[2] My Father's potential powers -> 
    1> Drink tea to be 10 times stronger
    2> Transport people to board game world of his choice, and challenge them to duel. Their fate in the real world depends on whether they win or lose in the board game world.

[3] My youngest sister's potential powers ->
    1> Lyre bird powers - simulate any sound she has heard before
    2> Communicate with animals
    3> The ability to withstand extreme heat, and manipulate the heat of other objects as well
    4> Super speedy reading, comprehension, and memorisation

[4] My middle sister's potential powers ->
    1> Transformation into any object she has seen before 
    2> Manipulate plants to do her bidding and allow them to grow at extreme rates

[5] My own potential powers ->
    1> Each earing I own grant a unique power, but only when I am wearing them.
    2> Abstracting real life - making real-life objects dissolve away into unreality
    3> Summon any book from across the globe, as long as you know its author/s and title
    4> Turn any acorn into a storage device, that can carry upto 20kg of things (no matter the size) whilst only doubling the size and weight of the acorn - A power inspired by the acorns in the Tales of the Frog Princess by E.D. Baker

Bibliography:

Baker, E.D. Tales of the Frog Princess. London, GB: Bloomsbury, 2007. 

Richardson, Tim. You Should Have Been Here Last Week: Sharp Cuttings from a Garden Writer, 2016. 


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