Herb Garden

Can you spot Elsie, tucked away in the middle of the photo? She got into all the pictures I took yesterday, without me noticing until I looked through on the computer! There are more photos on the Hedgewitch blog, if you're interested - I'll not to replicate those here, but just do a little gallery of things miscellaneous at the end of May. Previous years I always wished I'd taken a decent set of photos late spring before everything starts bursting out all over (and exhausting itself in the process) so I made a point of it this year. In case you were wondering, the unattractive plastic bucket is my noxious nettle brew (hence the heavy rock on top, to keep inquisitive little ones out).

Rose

This rose is an old friend.. we go back a long way! I was only a child when I planted the seed. It was one of those little kits you can get, you know a cardboard box with a pretty picture on the outside and inside is a plant pot, a seed and a little plastic bag of compost. I remember doing it! I can picture it now, in the back garden of the house where I grew up. I guess I must have watered it and it must have germinated and started to grow - I don't remember more than that.

It was left to its own devices. It must have just steadily got on with it. Years passed. Its existence was entirely forgotten by me. I left home. I moved about. Unbeknown to me, it had a custodian - my Dad. He didn't water it, he didn't check to see if it needed anything. But he didn't throw it away. And when my parents moved house, leaving London for Norwich, he must have taken it with them. Because when I was in my 30s, he said to me one day something along the lines of 'I've still got that grotty old rose of yours' (or words to that effect!). 'What old rose - you can't possibly mean that little shrub rose I tried to grow as a child?'

And it turns out that Dad had just parked it down the side of his shed and it just kept quietly growing. He brought it for me when I moved into the flat in Tottenham with my partner (now my husband). And so it passed to a new custodian, for my partner made and cherished a beautiful garden-against-the-odds outside the flat down the side of an unpromising alley and carpark. And he asked if he could put it into the ground. I said, well I think it really deserves it - I can't believe that its survived all this time in a pot! So after several decades of hanging on, the rose finally got its feet into the earth. And it was loved and tended and watered .. and for the very first time ever, it flowered. It survived the Tottenham carpark and thrived.

When we moved to Essex two years back now, we brought it with us and now I have it in my garden. Its very happy here and it has such a special significance for me.

It links me with my childhood self, with my childhood home, with my Dad who kept it for my sake, with my husband who nurtured it and got it to flower for me.. and planting it in the garden here makes me feel loved and somehow 'rooted' in my new home. Like something has turned full circle .. we were both seedlings together and thanks to the support of important people along the way, we are now in full bloom (or something like that!).

Scent

Hello all! I've been blown away these last few days by scent.. and I've been thinking about it a lot. You know, essential oils are great and everything, but its not the same. So what triggered all this? Well several things simultaneously: the boys came back from Nanny's house with a bunch of lily of the valley for me - what a treat! It has been scenting the bedroom, so that when you open the door you get a great waft of aroma .. and if you lie down and relax and breath it in can transport you to paradise.

Then, yesterday, at the end of a tired and rather fraught day with the little'un, when he'd finally been beaten by bedtime, and mummy still had the chore of heading back out into the garden and righting the havoc he'd been wreaking all afternoon, an amazing gift - opening the shed door and so creating a slight breeze, the wisteria sang to me. It just kind of rustled its leaves in the breeze and a shower of lilac petals spiralled down onto the grass around me and it enveloped me in perfume. I knew it smelt good, as you can smell it during the daytime, but I don't usually venture outside in the evening and was totally unprepared for its heady power. It just took every ounce of tension and stress right out of my body and blew it away on the breeze. Wow. Embraced by a plant!

And today, a moment of unalloyed bliss. My absolute top favourite all-time obsessive plant love is a rose which my mum-in-law (the same lovely lady who sends back bunches of lily of the valley, aren't I lucky?) grows. The perfume is exotic and heavy and druglike (ie. addictive!) She used to always send me back a bloom or two when we lived in Tottenham, and once we landed in Essex she gave me the gift of a cutting for my new herb garden. It thrives there, and in its first year, last year, it had two phenomenal blooms. It has grown massively in the year since and is all set to do its thing now .. today the first of 7 or 8 burgeoning buds burst into full bloom. I knew it was there, I watched it start to unfurl yesterday evening and open up gradually all morning out the window, and when I got back from dropping little'un at nursery for the afternoon the first thing I did was to head over and i.n.h.a.l.e... exquisite, just a personal moment of bliss.

It will be gone tomorrow, as its so hot out there this afternoon that the show will be over and it will drop its petals (I will be standing by to catch them). But its moments like that which sustain you through all the ordinary, uncomfortable or just less-than-satisfactory parts of life, don't you think?

Now that's aromatherapy!