I am speaking to you Dear Reader in conspiratorial tones. If I don’t, then I fear that this golden orb which has appeared in our skies for the last week or two will skedaddle back to Timbuktu or wherever it was it has been hiding for the last God knows how many months. It has been truly glorious here on the sunny Isle and we have been making the most of the garden which is looking rather splendid (if I do say so myself) if a touch wild in places. There are more self seeded Foxgloves that you could shake, well a Foxglove at, in every possible shade of purple, white and pink and the walkway down the garden is looking lovely with those and the Aquilegias in full flower. Everything is so very late because of the pants Spring we had but it’s a riot of colour out there.
I have been remembering Summers long gone as well over the last few weeks. I don’t know about you Dear Reader, but in my Summers past it never really seemed to rain and the days seemed endlessly long and warm. I remember the farmers cutting the long grass for hay and the dusty smell and tractor noises that were the backdrop of hot late August days. My father used to drag us out for walks on a Sunday afternoon always with a plastic bag in our pockets for anything that we might find (I do still do that) and my bedroom always had a nature table of sorts groaning with our finds. I fancied myself as a sort of Gerald Durrell / Diary of an Edwardian lady type for a while but my fear of birds (or in fact anything fluttery) and my lack of ability to draw at all soon put paid to those notions.
I have also been remembering the Summers that we spent with my maternal Grandmother. We would drive over (my Mother, brothers and I – never my Father) and stay with my Nan in her little red brick house on the side of a busy road in Hither Green. Coming, as we did, from the middle of nowhere in Ireland, this was a huge novelty for us and I can see us in the shops buying cream soda and penny sweets and fish and chips and going swimming in the local baths. My nan was almost childlike in her way and she delighted in milk jellies, scrumping pears from the next door neighbours standing on the bin and laughing her head off and having all of us (my cousins too) to stay. We squished ourselves into whatever beds or sofas were available and listened to her old 45s on her ‘radiogram’ whilst reclining on her ‘studio couch’. I remember the hot Summer of ’76 when she made houses and hideaways from old sheets and blankets and we played with all my Mother and aunt’s old dolls and prams. Happy days indeed.
Fast forward 40 odd years and I am doing the same as my Nan did but in my own garden and with my own grandchildren. When we bought our house with its third of an acre of garden our children were really too old to use or appreicate it and so it’s wonderful to now have these small folks running around and enjoying it.
We have assembled a motley assortment of hand me down toys and books, bikes and scooters and there have been many happy days spent colouring, having stories or running round the gardening flapping our arms, screeching and pretending to be birds (or was that just me?). We have planted seeds, watched them come up and become beans, sunflowers and all mannner of other things. We have spent rainy days in the greenhouse (WHY is it a greenhouse Nanny? It ISN’T green!!) chatting and planting and doing. And so finally, the garden has come to life again.
I like to think that when these little folks grow up they’ll have fond memories of Nanny’s garden like I do of my Nans. That they’ll remember having fun and laughs, dancing and singing silly songs, playing hide and seek in amongst the washing and that they’ll appreciate butterflies and flowers and the nature of things. If that’s the best memory they have of me when they get older then that’s ok by me. I’m sure we’ll get to a stage in the not too distant future when it all becomes a bit boring and that’s also ok by me. But I know that somewhere in the back of their minds there will always be a little something that triggers thoughts of good times. For me it’s the smell of Lemon Balm and Magnolia trees both of which instantly transport me back to Nan’s garden in the seventies. A time of simple pleasures, laughter and childhood fun and games. And as we know Dear Reader, it’s the simple things that mean the most.
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