April 19

I am really absorbed in reading this book - Gardening in Zimbabwe. I am doing research on roses and I find myself leaning back in my chair and reading on.

We all have different ideas on death and what happens when we leave this life.  My personal belief is that people we have loved stay close to us and can give us signs that they are still around.  You may think I'm nuts, but to be honest, I don't really care what other people think.  

I have been thinking about hedges for quite a while - types of hedges, their names and what grows in Zimbabwe and what doesn't.  This is all to do with the book I am writing. I kept getting a strong feeling about looking for my mum's gardening book so I went into the room in which we keep her things and on the shelf I saw a different gardening book - Gardening in Zimbabwe.  I opened it where there was a bookmark - and it was the section on hedges. That to me is a sign from my mum. The section on roses is also really comprehensive and it is this that now keeps my attention.

The writer prefaces the book with the words, 'Gardening is one of Life's Pleasures.  I hope that this book will help keep it that way.'  Throughout the book, I can hear this lovely, gently cajoling voice.

'There is no flower more popular than the rose, and probably no garden subject more talked about than roses.  They can be grown throughout the country, yet not all gardeners succeed.'  What a lovely man this Philip Wood, the author, sounds.  He goes into everything in such detail, giving little hints and pieces of advice. I also love the adverts at the back of the book: Kia Ora Nursery Proprietor: G.W. Smith, Telephone: 734532.  No one speaks of proprietors now and Whatsapp doesn't carry the same weight as 'telephone'. 

The book makes me realise how gardening is a lot of hard work and how knowledgeable one has to be.  Now all I want to do is get our compost heap going properly and give the garden a lot of nourishment.

The book speaks to me of long, sunny afternoons in the garden, digging deep into the soil, watching seedlings grow bigger and more hardy, the joy of seeing a flower's first bloom.  I used to love going to flower nurseries with my mother and choosing plants, and when I was 18, I worked in a nursery every morning of the August school holidays.  I think I was supposed to be studying for my A Levels, but I had just been introduced to Virginia Woolf.  The combination of Mrs Dalloway and the beauty of the flowers was so exquisite.  I remember this feeling that the whole of life was in front of me and it was wonderful.