I only ever owned one house. One of the reasons I bought it was that it had an enormous garden. Not only enormous, but it was an end plot, and kind of triangular shaped, odd, giving it character and the sense of finding new corners as you walked through it. The original owner of the house had bought the adjoining plot from the builder, and had planted an orchard. That was thirty years before I bought the house, and when I bought it it had been empty and neglected for years, having been repossessed by the bank.
Dry and wilted grasses had taken over, when you brushed them away in some areas you could see where random paths had been laid with stones. In the center was a pergola, possibly the least neglected thing about the entire property. Some mangos, lemons and oranges still struggled to survive, and a stumpy bush turned out to be a nispero, the most active fruit in the garden after a year of watering. A waif-like pomegranite began to prospero too, but never bore fruit. Bounganvilla, that sturdy ingredient of almost every garden here, was all over the place, not dead, but definitely in a coma.
I knew it was a mammoth task, and I knew that my gardening skills were probably not up to it…..but the dreams!
First priority was the house, which was just as forsaken, so in the meantime my teenage sons had permission to use the garden as they liked, providing they helped with the watering, so we can, at least begin to coax some life back. In the first year they built a skate ramp, (I have to say that motherly pride glowed……I had no idea that they had the sort of skills required to do something like that!) and for months the weekend garden rang to hoots and rock music and laughter. They cleared away huge chunks of the dried grasses, dead bouganvilla and withered branches, so some work did get done anyway.
With Fall came the rains, and we discovered that living at the bottom of a hill meant that all the flood water ran down the street, like a river, and through our garden. It became a yearly ritual, clomping about in wellies or bare feet to rescue stuff, or divert waters. After the rains, it was no time at all until the sun and warmth resurrected the weeds and grasses, and for a while they were lush and green.
Achingly slowly, we sowed grass, made new paths, renovated the pergola, pruned and sprayed the trees and bushes, we were rewarded with sweet mangos, though not in profusion (I think the trees were too old), a constant supply of lemons and the heavenly smell of orange blossom. We filled pots and other objects with geraniums and petunias. We created a rock garden in one corner. We allowed the bouganvilla to almost completely overgrow the front door, so gorgeous was it, and others we trained to give shady covering to the pergola. The boys did all the heavy work, with very little complaint, I have to say!
We lived in that house on and off for seven years (we all had times when we were away for months). There never was enough time, and it never did get finished.
Since then I lived in apartment without even a balcony (very unusual for here); another one where I had a small terrace, which I filled with pots of all sorts, but then finally gave up the battle with the local British kids and the whitefly, and then I moved here. Here I have a tiny balcony, which looks directly onto the ocean. If you look at my icon, that’s my window. I am ashamed to admit that I badly neglected the few plants I put out there to begin with. Life was hectic, and I decided that no plants made life easier, that applied to inside and out.
Life isn’t the same without plants, though, and so it was, that today, at the end of a free week, I found myself wandering the lanes of a garden center, inhaling all those wonderful smells which took my memories hurtling back, and dredging my mind to remember which plants like sun, which don’t mind too much if I occasionally forget to water them. How quickly we forget! It’s only six years since I had a garden, but I couldn’t remember the names of some of them. Can I plant geraniums together with rosemary? Would a jazmin survive the sun? Is bouganvilla too anti-social given the breezes here and how they can shed their flowers (would neighbours appreciate having to sweep up after my plants?) ?
Well, we’ll see how it goes. My dream is to one day have another garden like the one I once had, but to have the time to make it as I see it in my mind’s eye.
