Gardening Together
For forty years Kees and I have gardened together. We were married in Ottawa, Canada, in February 1958, and we initially rented a lovely suburban house, for three months, belonging to a bank manager who was holidaying in Mexico on his long service leave. How was I to know that under the feet of snow that was all my eyes could see outside the front door, was a beautiful garden? The basement was full of exotic African violets, with a page of type written instructions on how to look after them, so perhaps I could have guessed. There was not a list of instructions on how to use domestic appliances which, if given, would have stopped me having to ring Kees at work, on the first day I was left alone, complaining that the vacuum cleaner blew out air instead of sucking it in! I had put the tube in the wrong end. As an excuse I must write that I had only touched an upright Hoover, once or twice in my spinsters life.
By the second month, even I was beginning to lose the excitement of living in a white world. One day, when I ventured outside to collect the post, I looked down and saw a delightful garden scene, a picture that I can still recall vividly. Rich, purple Crocuses were thrusting up their globes of beauty, through that pristine white blanket of snow. Over the next weeks, I revelled in the changing scene that was happening outside the windows of our first home together. Too soon, Mr and Mrs Evans came back from their holiday and we moved to a flat [apartment] and our daily life changed. This was first time I had dwelled in a place that did not have a garden to walk in. At the end of the street was a little wilderness that surrounded a Canadian Mounted Police Academy. I was delighted to see one day, as I took a daily stroll there, a copse of wild lilac had come into bloom. Kees had permission from our landlord, to make a vegetable garden in the corner of the car park. I do not remember eating any vegetables from his effort, but as he had planted a seed within me and I was suffering from three months of all day nausea and unable to eat anything, his efforts may well have been successful. And so, this was our first gardening experience together - Kees tendering to his vegetables and me strolling beneath the wild lilacs.
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