Purple pansies

 We are definitely in pansy season. My writing friend and I chose this women to trigger our exercise because she seemed so determined as she walked up the street. However, my writing friend emphasized the heaviness of the pansies and another character in a wheel chair sneaked in. One of the beauties of doing these exercises is that the writer is often surprised where they go.

Alice carried the tray of pansies up the street. She would plant them in her “garden” which was a large purple ceramic pot outside her front door.

When she and her ex owned their house together, she had a large garden with both flowers and vegetables that she canned each fall, even though he said all that work was silly.

After her divorce she’d moved from the American Midwest to this tiny French village with streets so narrow that her ex-husband’s SUV would not be able to drive through without scraping the sides of the vehicle. The idea of his precious baby scratched made her smile.

Jared would not understand how she was happier in her one-room wide house attached on both sides to her neighbours’ homes compared to her five-bedroom home on two acres of land. The ground floor was the living room, the middle was the kitchen and dining area and the top floor was her bedroom and studio.

She’s installed skylights in the red tiled roof to give her enough light to paint. When she fell asleep at night the odor of paint and turpentine stayed in her nostrils. In the last few minutes before drifting off she would plan her the following day.

Last night her thoughts had been of purple pansies to first paint then plant. In some countries purple was the colour of mourning. For Janine it was the colour of freedom.