Every year for the last 3 years I have done a final wrap up in my garden journal. I write all the success’ and the failures, what to look for next year in the spring, what to transplant, or maybe ideas for new plants. This year is a little different — I won’t be here next year. I will be … I don’t know where I’ll be actually. I just know it unfortunately won’t be here.

Tim’s Dad will  be the caretaker of this little cottage garden next spring. Thirty years ago this garden was lovingly brought to life by Tim’s parents. We were merely its temporary guardians.

While I was off living in funky downtown loft-like apartments in London (ON) and way up in the sky in the GTA, I missed having a little garden to call my own. Just a little patch of earth to get my nails dirty with, to sweat over, and languish affection onto. Through all the tears and sorrow, the joy and celebration, we have had this peace, this beauty. It is a landscape filled with memories.

“What other creative undertaking can produce such total submission as gardens do? They are both felicitous and predatory; they get you by the throat and do not let go. Surrender is total…” Mirabel Osler

The current hardcopy garden journal I’ve been using since March of 2011 was a gift from my Aunt Penny, years ago — 15 or more years ago. Probably back when I was married. That was another garden I have had to leave behind. I never took the time to write in it back then; but I’ve carried it with me.

Penny wrote on the front inside page;

To help you keep track of all the stories you see, hear and smell in your garden.

My last entry ~ July 21, 2012;

• Sunflowers are out. Frogs abundant in pond – Leopard Frogs, Bullfrogs, even wee Tree Frogs.
• Herb Garden needs change. I’ve made a start with some cosmos and some Queen Anne’s Lace, but I still think it would benefit from a bold drift of something, maybe a couple Russian Sage?. Maybe some lovely silvery foliage, such as the Artemsia ‘Silver King’.

The garden this year, I must say, was stunning. The best part was it was totally carefree as well – low maintenance, and looked wild and bold. Oh, there were some areas that if I’d had the time or inclination I would have fiddled with – herb area being in that category. Even still, it really put on a show.

That entry was my last, and I realize that not to many days later we learned Tim’s cancer had returned. The garden than became my refuge. A place to shed my tears alone to. It understood loss. It gave its beauty and we could look around us and be proud of the mark we had left. It was always Tim’s way to leave something, usually, better than when he found it.

The next page of that garden journal is waiting to be filled. It lies there blankly, staring at me.  I am not sure this year if I will write my final ‘wrap’. It seems too bitter sweet.

I will instead dream of that future garden. The book is only half full…I have many pages left to fill with the stories, the smells and sounds of that garden to be. Maybe just for me.

“The principal value of a private garden… is not to give the possessor vegetable and fruit (that can be better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him {or her} patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues – hope, deferred and expectations blighted”.
Charles Dudley Warner [1829-1900]

For more photos of the Garden: see Gardening