I have spent the last 2 days in my garden wherein I can get my breath! With the glint of solar lanterns, gusts of fresh air, an empty washing line and dead heads on roses.. a garden calls to you.
A garden does not drink except from the rain and water butt; a garden does not go to the match then nod off at the table on a dinner date with friends.
It is there for you; a garden waits for you.It changes with every season yet remains constant. It sleeps but its awakening is hinted at with the reappearance of green noses nudging frosted soil; it greets the year with spears of snowdrops; suncoloured aconites warn you of coming spring and daffodils trumpet Spring's arrival. The year opens in a garden, progresses stately into the full bloom of England's roses which hang on in the waning of the year. The unfurled leaves of my beech provide shade from a hot sun; summer fruits and veg make their way from cane and vine into my kitchen, freezer and jars.
Even in dying the garden tells you there is resurrection; the beech leaves drift like snow and glow gold with promise across the grass. Wolfbane waves from erect and deadly, monks' hoods at the back of the border; a last, bright shout at the rusting foliage that there is more to follow if we but wait.
No one can steal a garden from you; it is your work; a work always in progress; it is your bottom gurning from the border's edge that can be seen from the television and computer soles looking from the house. Robins, tits, and blackbirds become your friends watching you from a nearby branch. As twigs bare, your garden asks you for tender care; dishevelled, it waits for the glimmer of sunshine - and you. It never tries to claim your thunder, claiming it has done your work; the toil and treasure are yours. The link with our agricultural, rural past is made in a garden; in fact gardens look back to an ancient life of subsistence, nomadic hunter/gathering.
The garden houses the silence of snow, the clink of cups, crying from a pram, the shrill alarm-call of blackbirds, gleeful shouts of children, flaps of clothes on a windy line and the crack of fireworks above an autumn bonfire. Even when it is asleep a garden cradles life.
There can be nothing so like heaven as lying on a bee-humming, clovered lawn with the sun glinting at you through silver birch branches above you and a child's hand in yours.
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