Lasting legacy

People come and people go in our lives, some staying for a lifetime, some for a significant amount of time and others fleetingly pass to and fro weaving around us like maypole dancers.  Not all these people make an impression, not all these people make a good or a lasting impression but sometimes it is right to take a step back and consider for a moment.

There are times when people come into your life, they throw your life around, turning it upside down and you feel like a helpless witness to the chaos you are suddenly living in.  It can be very hard after such a time to think of the good and the positive and sometimes it is not possible at all.  I feel the need to look to find the sign of the positive, the thing I can point to and say – yes, that is your legacy and it is good.

I look around my garden, which is my territory and definitely my sanctuary.  I cast my eyes around looking at the different elements that make it into what it currently looks like today.  It is still a newish garden, not yet five years old, but it is starting to mature well.  I look at my roses and smile, my various trees that I have planted and the shrubs and perennials – all planted by me and all making me happy.  No, correction, not all planted by me; there is the acer, known as the Carol Klein acer as it was bought from her nursery many years ago in another person’s life.  It lived for years in a pot and then was finally planted out in the garden not long after moving to this house.  It is in the wrong place, it gets horribly wind burned and I need to move it.  I had hesitated to move it, it was possible it might have been reclaimed, but that can’t happen now can it.

I look at the pile of sandstone rocks at the top end of the garden, not my creation and too big, too difficult for me to move.  I am encouraging things to grow over it to hide it away and one day it will get a Brenda to make it into a tiny grotto (or a grotty).

I look at the pond, I remember its creation (which involved the loss of a portmeirion mug), I frown at the memory, I liked that mug.  I now love my pond, originally built to be a goldfish pond, but subverted by me into a wildlife pond.  I successfully undid what I could and made it what I wanted.  No, that is still not the thing I seek.

The search continues, what can I light upon, what can I say left the good impression and then I find it.  Yes, of course, the greenhouse.  You put the greenhouse up and that in itself was a major development for the garden.  Where would the garden be without the greenhouse.  Oh and the raised vegetable beds, you made those too.

So the search stops, I can look at the greenhouse and the raised beds and say ‘you contributed those and they are good’.  I truly hope you now can rest in more peace than you had in life.  Good bye.