i've been meaning to keep a proper garden journal for some time.......so far there are just a few jottings in my notebook but they don't really give a picture of how profoundly this garden has changed. and not just the garden. i know that this house chose me...........i felt it as soon as i stepped in the door. we nearly didn't even come to look at it............but i knew at once. the lilac tree....the fireplace.........but more than that, the "something"......friendly ghosts perhaps.....who knows.we moved in 100 years and one month after the original owners, after a mad fortnight of decorating...........the house had been on the market for six months, the owners were getting desperate.........lots of people had looked, nobody had offered.....it was waiting for us.
..........a year later we had separated. sobriety had not brought what we had hoped for. things disappeared one by one........we fought over small trifles, pictures, CD's........i was left alone, insane with pain and rage, with a house and garden of my own.......i realise as i type that it's the first ever garden of my own.
the first thing we put in was the Japanese maple, because we buried Khan under it. there are now two more cat graves in the garden..........under the paeonies, Spicey, and under the catmint, Oscar. Spicey had a mini-rose originally but the paeonies have swamped it. i don't really remember what else we planted.......perhaps nothing, we were too busy fighting. the Caryopteris did come from our old house though, and has been in a bed, in a pot, and now back in a bed again. but i can't think of anything else that came from there.......apart from the Stephanotis that i thought was dead until i re-potted it and it climbed away up the wall and along the curtain-rail.........how strange that i had just disentangled it and taken it upstairs to give my passion plant more freedom, and then found out that my ex is moving.....
....and there's the Hoya, which flowers beautifully and massively every year, the books say it doesn't like being moved so it's sat there totally immobile for seven years, it seems to like the bathroom.....
.........some old friends have gone......Heptie the umbrella plant.........Heptie never really recovered from the move, and also didn't much like me forgetting to water him.....my goose-foot plant, grown from a leaf stolen from the one in the medical ward at Ballochmyle Hospital when i was and SHO, the hospital is long gone but the plant lived 17 years.........
...........i found the terrarium my ex made so i cleaned it and re-stocked it and it's thriving........and wonder of wonders, i've actually managed to have a Dizygotheca not die on me for a couple of years......
........then of course there's the spotted begonia and her many progeny.....i've forgotten whether she's the daughter or granddaughter of Mum's original, or possibly even of Sylvia's one that i looked after while she was in Israel, every time another bit fell off i potted it up and made another plant......she hasn't ever flowered in this house but who knows, this might be her year......
........some things didn't make it. the Caladium.....Pip's plant.....the hibiscus.
.........i inherited Aunty Kitty's Christmas cacti, clearly of Orthodox persuasion because they flowered loads but well before Christmas.......they're outside for their summer holiday at the moment along with the scented geraniums and the jasmine.......like most Scottish summer holidays it's proving a bit chilly and they're all shivering on the patio pretending it's fun........
.........i seem to be good at African violets even though i don't really like them........Sita's one had nine flowers while she was in Egypt, and my own one is covered in flowers too, maybe i should get it a friend......
where i am now, the study, is the only room in the house with no plants in it, apart from the top floor which is empty at the moment. i worked out that about 17 people have lived in this house since we bought it, not all at the same time of course.......Katrina, Meggan, Sylvia, Sarah, Tim, Niall, Maureen and Paul, Pip, Ian, Patricia, Bruce and Laura,Anna, Nan, Tamara and Johnny. Plus ourselves of course, and passing guests. At the moment it's me and les chats........which is quite enough....
there are plants in the garden as well of course.....
at first lots of weeds came up. those non-stinging nettly things. i just let them. i don't think i really did anything to the garden for about four years......mowed the grass of course, and had the front landscaped.......the people before us had shoved in a few clemati to make it look as though they'd done something, so those came up. the front was cold and windswept with dense shade under the tree, so i thought nothing would grow there, and it didn't. the back had a wooden partition in the midst of miserable grey concrete, boring grass and weedy beds. there was the yellow rose........and Paul next door's honeysuckle which came over the wall, and John and Fiona on the other side's ivy which poured over the other wall and across the concrete by the kitchen door.
.......the garden provided a few ideas of its own. Aquilegia and feverfew, Alchemilla at the front. some things started to establish and look good.........the sage and rosemary beside the Hebe in the bottom corner..........
.........I had Blair gravel the bottom area by the shed, and threw all the rubbish in a big heap in the very dark bit at the far end under the overhanging tree.
.........i don't know when i started to actually begin to "garden", but my notes start two years ago.........which is probably round about when i came into Alanon. I put in a tree...............a weeping birch, and made a little bed around it. A honeysuckle beside it.......and the spreading yellow thing which i've since moved to beside the pond, which turns out to be called "Brazen Hussy"! - some sort of buttercup i think. i had also attempted to cheer up the patio by chiselling up the slabs, turning them over to make a checkerboard pattern, and painting them. i borrowed my ex's crowbar; it was extremely hard work but it was also when i knew i was getting better from the mysterious illness because i actually had the strength to do it. it was Easter Monday i remember. i planted little spreaders in the mini-beds and it looked quite good for a while, until it didn't.......discovered the wonders of Pratia as a carpeter though!
...........the first really major thing, though, was the pond. of which more anon.......
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