front garden thoughts

Last week two very nice men built me a front garden. They are Ray and Dan of Rotherview Nurseries, just North of Hastings.

It has gone from this rather bleak shingle desert

to this

We’ve known them for some years, our old home being two doors down from Dan’s. They build us a lovely pergola, patio and path in the old place, with alpines tucked in here and there round a strange little rockery we made from large pebbles and odd bits of Victorian groyne collected one by one from the beach. 

This was where the golden yew lived, at the end of the path to the ponder spot.









This time more planting was needed. We planned it together, combining those plants I  had propagated from the old place with plants from the nursery, Ray having skilfully teased out of me what I wanted from the vague ideas in my head – “well sort of flow’ey with colours ranging from red to purple”, while Dan provided added suggestions.

The garden is south facing, the only really sunny spot so far, as the back is so shaded by the house. I want to catch the light, as I have indoors, but this time with plants. There are grasses to waft in the breeze and shimmer through much of the year, a weeping silver birch, one of my favourite trees, low growing plants to spill over the wall facing the house and a wisteria in a huge pot that I hope will ramble over some trellis and provide a wall of soft purple when it finally flowers. I so look forward to it all growing to maturity.


 My lavender cuttings were just about enough to provide a hedge right across the front, where I hope it will spill through the black picket fence and delight passers by with its scent and texture. Here they are all lined up.

Just now it looks rather empty as the plants are all little and are waiting to put on their spring/summer splendour. I can't wait!

I do feel very strongly that the front garden is the bit you share with the world – it’s not so much there for show, in a look at me sense, rather a collection of flowers, textures, scent and colour that you give to the people around you. When I was still at school, I often walked the 3 miles or so home when the weather was good. The walk started up on a high point to the North of Hastings called The Ridge – a final sweep of the South Downs before they merge into the Weald of Kent. The view from up there was wonderful, so as I walked, with my schoolbag bag clasped heavy in front of me, I swooped and swam in mind, out above the rooftops over the far sparkling sea to Beachy Head. Then as my route flowed down the hill, I walked through seventies suburbs with heather, azalea, birch and well tended lawns until it levelled out onto a busy bit of main road where the houses hid behind high fences to shelter from the noise. Once past that I dipped down again, the road meandering along the side of Alexandra Park  and through time from the thirties right back to Victoriana. This was where I lived, sheltered on front by the park, and behind by a steep hill of allotments and scrub where, in the thirties/forties my great aunt’s companion kept a mushroom farm. Through all this urban part of my walk, I would watch front gardens; some scruffy and weedy with unkempt edges, or no edges at all; some beautifully, almost artificially manicured, with green moss free lawns mown to within an inch of their lives and the odd gnome. In between these extremes were those gardens with blowsy irises or beautiful trees that attracted me, gave me pleasure. These I watched through the year as I walked past them until, at last, I would dip down yet again, crossing the park to reach home. There Ganna would be waiting for me since, for much of the time, Mum was out at work. I loved those gardens, they allowed my mind to disengage from school, where I always felt out of place, to drift for a while in dreamland, until I had to reengage with the curious world I lived with at home, quiet and sedate and, now I look back on it, from another time period entirely.

Do we all become orphans?

I had an interesting chat today with two good souls, a mother and daughter team, who run a knitting shop near where I work. More than just knitting, there is sewing, crochet and a weaving class that I’d love to join if I can allow myself to. I walk past this shop when I leave work each day – imagine the temptations! However, in amongst the crafty chat there was deeper thought. We found ourselves talking about losing loved ones, in this case our parents. The mother, whose name I don’t yet know, lost both her parents four years ago. I lost Dad when I was 7, then my dear Ganna, who had become a surrogate parent, when I was 21 and finally Mum last year. We pondered on the way that this loss touches us daily, little things that might trigger emotions that veer between a soft, aching sorrow and an overwhelming need to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”.

Mum was a daily light in my life, despite all the trials that come with caring for a strong willed woman, who was progressively losing her connection to reality. I would go upstairs knowing that her deep blue eyes would fill with unconditional joy as she realised my presence. We argued at times, at times she could be dreadfully difficult, and the anguish of watching her get lighter and lighter as she ceased to eat, convinced that she’d already cooked herself a “lovely lunch” was at times too much to bear. Yet each day this shining smile would greet me, blue as the sky, bright as the sun. All my life I understood that she was “fragile”, though we didn’t realise the nature of that fragility until I was diagnosed, in adulthood, with the same condition, in diluted form. As a child she broke bones with frightening regularity, as had her mother, aunt and grandfather.  She started breaking again once menopause set in, first a finger, then an elbow, a knee smashed to smithereens, her pelvis, sternum, spine, skull, neck. I watched her little body gradually crumple and deform as Osteogenesis Imperfecta added inexorably to the normal loss of bone and muscle that goes with ageing. Yet through all of this her soul remained gloriously strong, her smile generous and her sense of fun undimmed. She was my inspiration. And now she is gone just as, in the natural order of things all our parents go before us “into that good night”.

So we women, chatting in a small shop in Hastings, pondered on this loss and the way in which we felt, despite our years, orphaned. The dictionary defines an orphan as a child whose parents are dead. But do we not all feel, from time to time, helpless as children, frightened by the demands of life, intimidated by the responsibilities we expect ourselves to bear? I know I do, and have often in the past. Yet we put on a brave face, rarely answer the query “how are you?” with true replies, understanding the shallow nature of this reflex social patter. Why can we not feel orphaned, even as adults, when the person who has been our benchmark in life has gone forever? I miss Mum every day, in scraps and starts, between the contingencies of living. She is a hollow place in my heart. I know my daughter misses her beloved grandmother too – as I did when Ganna died. We feel bereft, while understanding that this is the nature of being. Our only certainty in living is that we will die; the only true, mindful response to this is to live our best lives while we can. But in amongst this trying and accepting, understanding and letting go, perhaps we could allow ourselves to be orphans once in a while. Perhaps that is natural response, at any age, to this inescapable loss.

Angels

When I've taken some more pictures, I will post about my new front garden, but for now, I can't better this lovely post from Terri Windling's magic studio.
Angels indeed

Today I found my childhood in a suitcase

It was all here

These beautiful suitcases contain a myriad of family memories. I feel privileged to own them, and pay tribute to my dear little Mum, who treasured them herself all these years.







I have always had them in the back of my awareness, part of my childhood's fabric. I peered into them when I was much younger, but in recent years, as she declined, it seemed an intrusion on her privacy, so fragile she was, yet enduring.


I wept with relief to find them intact, such poignant things

There are sad things, to do with my father's death, but also happy things like this!

The Beatles circa 1964 - by me - aged 3!

And wonderful things like Mum's diaries kept during the war 1940-1947.

I am almost afraid to read them - she is still so close.

spring is coming!

Over the weekend we went back to the old house, which is very nearly sold/rented out - just another week to go! Spring in the old garden was very obvious, with snowdrops, cyclamen and viburnum flowering away.

Here in the new garden it is a more subtle affair, but still the signs are there if you poke about a bit. I spent some time out there today clearing overgrown vinca and chopping back where needed. It is all rather Secret Garden'ish, which is just how I like a new garden. There is the joy of poking about and finding things you never suspected were there, shoots poking through gravel, buds swelling and flowers shyly hiding until you take the trouble to gently bend back a leaf or two. You'll find a few more pictures here.

We discovered over Christmas that this garden was nurtured for forty years by our neighbour's parents. How delightful to know a little bit of the history of the place. Now we can love it and look for it's spirit ourselves, adding out own little quirks and bits of history.

The front garden, which once swooned to the scent of honeysuckle, was cleared by the people we bought it from; reduced to a barren patch of gravel. However, I have plans and plants and good contacts in the nursery trade who are going to create us a new garden over the next week. At the moment it is a line of sand on the gravel, but I can see it in my mind's eye in a few year's time, enclosing the front a bit, giving a sense of privacy, but embracing all who approach the front door, or at least that is the plan!

I have brought a collection of plants from our old place, including some cyclamen and a single snowdrop that I hope will survive.

They are all destined for the new front garden, and will include two trees that I have been growing in pots since my daughter was quite a small child. They will give spring flowers and autumn colour and berries for the birds, since both are native. Then there is a collection of lavender cuttings I took last year, for scent, some grasses to shimmer in the breeze and trap light, and a large pot with wisteria to flow along a trellis and fill the air with perfume, so we can give pleasure to ourselves and to passers by.

I will keep you posted as to progress.

evening

this evening was like this

Subtle gradings of colour captured by the trees,

entangled in the light catcher, 

soft gloaming

Third Week at work

I have just begun my third week at work. It is exhausting, but also tremendous fun. People are delightful, customers in the library, staff some of whom I have known for 20+ years. There is something to be treasured in that patina of long acquaintance; those I work with make that work pleasurable. Certainly there are times when customers are rude, or someone irritates the hell out of you, but they are simply human. Why should we feel that life must always be kind to us, since it so evidently isn't for almost everyone else? But these last two weeks, having spent the past year thrown a great deal on my own resources and often solitary, have been a reminder of the kindness of life. I have been greeted, hugged, smiled at, by so many people, shared bits of news, fragments of their own past years, but also had moments when I've felt terribly insecure. That is the way of life, with pattern variable as the sea by which I live.

There is, however, less time for everything else, so blogging, both following and writing must fit into the spaces in between!