Have any of the books
you’ve read made you dream of doing something in particular? Or have you ever been inspired by a book to
do something in real life? I have.
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| Book cover courtesy of Wikipedia |
I can’t remember when
I first read The Secret Garden by
Frances Hodgson Burnett, but I know I loved it even more than A Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy, both of which
I’d enjoyed. It wasn’t so much the story
of spoiled Mary and her transformation into a happy, loving little girl that
caught my imagination, however, but the garden itself. The image of a secret garden, enclosed by
tall brick walls and covered in trailing roses stuck in my mind. A creaking iron gate, a pond, an intelligent
little robin hopping round the place, gravel paths and a riot of flowers
... I wanted that garden! And I still do.
My husband and I
recently moved to the countryside and the house we’ve bought has a large
garden. Not a walled one or even one
full of flowers – most of the flower beds contained nothing but ugly
bushes of one sort or another – but a garden nonetheless. And now I am determined to transform it into
the secret garden of my dreams.
This may take years –
in fact, there’s no doubt about that, it will – and I’ll have to do most of the
work myself, with a little help from my DH as we can’t afford to get in a
garden designer and a team of landscape gardeners. But I don’t mind because it’s going to be
fun. It’s going to be a challenge. And I will learn as I go along.
A couple of weeks ago
I made a start. Not on the garden
itself, but on the learning part. I had
a lesson in brick-laying. My daughters
thought I’d gone mad, but in order to have a secret garden I need brick walls
obviously and I want to build them myself.
Ok, so one lesson probably won’t be enough for me to build an entire
wall straight away, but I figured I could start by building raised flower beds
at least. How hard can it be to lay
bricks in a rectangle? (Sort of like Lego, but bigger, right?) Then I can grow
things like vegetables without having to bend over too much for the dreaded
weeding.
I really enjoyed the
lesson and although I was clumsy and felt like I was the slowest brick-layer in
the history of mankind, I managed to build a little wall. (We were indoors practising, thankfully, as
the weather outside was freezing!) I even
managed to do the pointing and I learned to always use a spirit level to
lay the bricks evenly. I can do this! And I’m even more determined now I’ve tried.
Patience isn’t one of
my greatest virtues, but if I start now and build say 5 metres of wall every
year for the next 20 years, I might have my secret garden. And in the meantime, I can create the
flowerbeds and paths inside it. Now
doesn’t that sound great? Oh, and if any
of you feel like coming over to help, it might not take quite so long and you
can enjoy the tranquillity of my secret garden too :-)
