Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance……everybody thinks it’s true” – Paul Simon 2007
We gardeners think about and work towards the future – we are assuming a future. We are optimists. Gardening involves anticipation and looking forward. We usually imagine we can make our garden nicer or better next year. Even as we look at our pots of tulips in May, we think about which ones to order for delivery in October to flower the next May.
Gardening is also about successes or disappointments that have gone before. We also know that however a garden is now, it will be different next year. Good or bad it won’t be the same next time. All pleasures in the garden are temporary and luckily so are the mistakes.
So I have a tale to tell about my mum who is nearly 102 yrs old. To set the scene, here she is aged 94 yrs old in her back garden. (I hope you’re humming the Paul Simon song….)
spring bulbs in raised beds
Bonkers summer bedding
And here is the front of her house, which she left aged 99 yrs old to move into a Care Home.
A riot of colour in pots at her front door
Mum, me and her crazy pots
She loves colour and I have inherited that. see here She wears jewel colours and has always loved spring bulbs and summer bedding. All her life she has planted bulbs every autumn and bedding every spring, and is still doing so now. At the Care Home she organises the gardeners and she also does all the flower arrangements around the premises. Still humming I hope….
“What is the point of this story, what information pertains”…
In November she fell and broke her hip. They gave her a new hip and she sat in hospital for a few weeks. For a while she decided to give up and not bother getting better. Then one day she decided she would get a grip, get out of there and get better because firstly she had planted loads of bulbs and wanted to see them come up and secondly she had promised to plant up some pots for people and hadn’t done it yet.
That optimism and future thinking got her out of bed and back into her life. Within days back at the Care Home she was planting up pots of bulbs for her friends. In February she’ll be 102 yrs old and she’ll enjoy her snowdrops, daffodils and tulips – and then her thoughts will turn to petunias, geraniums and marigolds. Always thinking ahead……
“The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains”……
(you’ll be humming this for days now)
Happy New Year to everyone who has kindly followed my blog so far and here’s to a lovely year of gardening in 2022.
Hi Julie what a lovely story! So appropriate for the time of year and so true about us gardeners. Already there is plenty of evidence emerging tentatively from the ground to demonstrate that the world keeps turning, things keep growing and we need to keep planning! And those plans we already planted are gradually coming to fruition, as they always do, albeit sometimes more successfully than others. Even in midwinter there is plenty going on in the garden, but even more to look forward to. Happy New Year, hope the weather os kind to your garden in 2018 🙂
You’re so lucky to still have your mum, Julie; she sounds like an amazing and inspirational woman. It was lovely to meet you earlier this year and wish you all the best for 2018. Happy New Year! Caro x
Thank you Caro, Can you believe how time has flown since we met in September. Thanks for your feedback and yes, an inspiration in many ways. I don’t do summer bedding myself though – far too much work. Best wishes , Julie
Lovely post and pictures. xx
Thankyou so much Flighty, I really appreciate your encouragement. Best wishes for 2018, Julie