Away from Home and Garden

Pots on the decking

I don't like being away from home. Being away from home means being away from people, cats and the garden that I love.

Cats in my Garden

I spend many weekend hours happy with just a cat for company, even if there isn't much conversation. I have my garden supervisor (Jerome) who will follow me to the ends of the lucerne paddock and back, and the others (Sifter, Mugsy and Stumpy) who will never miss the morning tea ceremony on the house patio. Then there's Taj-dog who pushes past me as I'm trying to cross one of the bridges, or chases the visiting ducks out of the pond for me.

My garden, too, is always there. Inside the house, every window has its own special garden view. I can watch the moon slip behind the big gum tree at night, or I can stare out of a rainy window across the house lawns and beyond. I might sit in the breakfast chairs and redesign the ex-Island Bed one more time (the Mexican Orange Blossom is reprieved season after season) or just stare out over the shelter trees and dream expansive garden dreams...

Plantings over the water race

And I'm out in the garden each weekend, and if possible each day. I don't just work in the garden. I spend ages just wandering around peering at things. If I'm feeling brave I'll even put on my glasses. I'll listen to the birds and insects, thinking of nothing. I'll sit in the shade in summer with a book, or stare at the water burbling along the water race when I feel philosophical. Where does all the water come from?

Missing my Garden

Recently I had a serious forced break from my garden. I was the driver of the school minibus and professional game-watcher. I tried to wander around purposefully, smiling, but the students kept sidling up to me and asking if I was alright. Was it that obvious to them that deep in my private thoughts I was desperately missing my garden?

Silver birch in the strange garden

We were staying at an air base which offered accommodation to visiting groups. There were many barracks buildings (most unused) dotted around the grounds, little tarmac streets, and a formally planted garden with a large flat lawn, ringed with shelter plantings of native trees and shrubs.

A Bare Pergola

The middle of the lawn had old style rose gardens cut into it. There was a sad bare pergola, and an old concrete birdbath in between the harshly symmetric beds. This was a government institution, so there was no personality, no quirkiness of a real gardener's love.

I sat under a huge variegated elm and sat to dream. Helicopters and light planes droned overhead, and there was a steady hum of what sounded like a large distant lawn mower (it was). Birds scratched on the ground of the tightly packed native border.

Green on Green

The plantings were simple layers of green on green. Coprosmas and Hoherias stood out at the front of large Pseudopanaxes and Pittosporums.

The Hebes were large and woody, straining forwards to get the light. Above were towering Pohutakawa trees, with a lone monkey puzzle tree.

Imagine me sitting here, dreaming of my own garden back home.

Lonely Roses

I wandered over to inspect the rose garden - formally laid out roses seem to demand close-up attention. They were sprawling with autumn scruffiness, flowering desperately, but in the bare squares they looked rather forlorn. I thought of my own fruit salad rose garden, crammed full of rejects and bargain bin beauties, spaces filled with penstemon cuttings and randomly placed lavenders. These strange rose beds needed something else - even a thoughtfully laid box hedge, or at least an edging of soft flowing catmint. Roses without friends gave me a lonely feeling, and I had to look away.

Pohutakawas in the lawn

Relaxing in this sad strange garden was infinitely preferable to sitting in the unfamiliar guest room or the lounge room full of bored teenagers (away from home and only ONE channel on the TV!). The layers of green on green were restful, and the lawns were calm and comfortable. The huge Pohutakawas must have looked beautiful covered in scarlet flowers at Xmas time, and so must the fat cylindrical Camellias, abandoned in the middle of the lawn, when they flowered in the winter. It wasn't my style, but life and hope runs through gardens everywhere.

I still missed my own garden, but it would be at home waiting. I resolved to be even more inspired when I got home. Absence would make my gardening heart grow fonder - and the weeds grow stronger.