My Three Gardens – Garden 1

Today’s prompt for Writing101 is loss and the suggestion to make it the first in a serial.

At first I didn’t think I had the time today to write this. Then I realised that actually I was avoiding the subject of loss. On reflection I thought that maybe it would be useful to put the discomfort into words.

I’ve had a lot of change in my life and gardens have been there in the background. There are three significant gardens in my story.
I start with garden 1.

My first garden.
I’d read the books, I’d drooled over seed catalogues, I was so keen. Would I actually enjoy the reality?

I did. I found I loved the messiness, the smells, physical exercise and constant change.
My happiest memories are of a summer’s morning up early out in the garden to see tiny changes different from yesterday, things had actually changed in 24 hours.
Plants grew that I had planted ! I was God in that world, I granted existence to so many plants that grew and reproduced.
Some failed to thrive and I was outraged, I had planted them why didn’t they grow ? A wise neighbour gave advice that stayed with me ‘Don’t take it personally’ I realised that I had taken it very personally, how absurd.

I was happy there, there were happy days, life was full of distraction and stimulation. The beginnings of future problems were hardly visible, minor irritations in the ebb and flow of life, I didn’t understand their significance.

The seasons changed, some perennials became part of the furniture of our outdoors. Red hot pokers started to rampage through the front garden. My life was clematis and roses…. ah roses I never really got the hang of them.

A move was going to happen.
I was going to leave my first garden, my creation. But it was okay. I had learned that gardening was a process not a product.

But I am sad when I think of that garden, not because I lost the garden, but because I miss the happy days I spent in it at the time I didn’t know of the pain ahead.