Gardens - Sanctuary Sometimes

How lovely it is to relax in the peace of a garden with a cup of tea and a good book. This desire doesn’t happen much in my easy-care outside space. It is pleasant enough, on a warm afternoon, to sit out by the flower beds and planters, admire the emerging seedlings, the fruits of my labour and settle for a quiet read. I have to choose my moment. We live in a busy neighbourhood, popular with families and there’s always someone having noisy work done. One day recently, hoping for a calm half hour, maybe longer, before children play out after school, I sat out there on our new garden bench. Within minutes, an electric lawnmower was started up close by. Not my lucky day. We have to live and let live, of course – or move to somewhere remote, north of the border – so headphones might become my new best friend for these occasional summer moments.

There is a walled garden in the grounds of the lodges where we like to stay in Dumfries & Galloway. We always go for a stroll and take an interest in what’s going on as we look round. We’ve watched it develop over many years and it is nice to follow the seasonal changes. On a sunny lunchtime last November, we enjoyed a picnic in a sheltered spot. Get the timing just right and there will be red kites circling above, coming to their feeding and conservation station nearby.

It was a warm summer day when we decided to go to Threaves Gardens in Castle Douglas. Dogs are not allowed, so we’d been denied this excursion for years. This time, it was just the two of us. Our beloved springer had gone over the rainbow bridge to doggy heaven and we were visiting new places. The gardens are beautiful and much bigger than we expected. We were as far from the shelter of the entrance gift shop and cafe as we could possibly be when the blue sky turned cloudy, quickly becoming dark, then a heavy downpour caught us, and others. We can’t rush so we just got wet. Another visit on a dry day would be good, to see what we had to miss out.

A poem from A Child’s Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson, a favourite poetry book from my childhood,

The Flowers

All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener’s garters, Shepherd’s purse,
Bachelor’s buttons, Lady’s smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames—
These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people’s trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.

                        Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 – 1894

Thanks for reading, Pam x