My very first memory is of standing in a garden surrounded by flowers. The flowers were taller than I was. It was the garden where I learned to walk. I drive passed it most days.
There is another house and garden that lives in my box of memories that I also see daily. I never lived there but I yearned to. I still do; I have fleeting daydreams of what it will be like when it is mine.
Watching the wind ripple through the young corn today took me back to sitting on a wall at the edge of that garden, gazing at gusts eddying and flowing through the green wheat. In the spring, the wind in that garden shook the catkins on the pussy willow trees and made the bluebells dance.
In the heat of childhood summers, we would walk waist deep in the round pond, avoiding goldfish and shuddering as the cold mulch squished between our toes. There were tiny, periwinkle blue flowers on the rockery and pansies with gaudy faces. Beyond that grew gnarled crab apple trees where once I spied a lady with a pink crinoline and parasol that no-one else saw.
The greenhouses were warmed by metal pipes, where fat, brown toads lived among the powerful, earthy scent of tomato plants and geraniums. Inside the house, an Aga constantly supported a bubbling pan, while a smoky grey cat purred on the hearth of a giant stone fireplace.
Hidden behind the curtain and sitting on the window seat, I would look across the fields to the sea in the early summer. The sunlight sparkled and pirouetted on the calm surface like a separate entity. Outside, roses climbed a trellis on the wall.
When it’s mine, I won’t change a thing …
Nature can be a cruel mother. Tonight she sent the rain, heavy and prolonged, knowing it would tempt out the toads to walk across the roads as people returned home from work.
