The pocket handkerchief …
The year 1923 was fairly unremarkable by historical standards. Sure, Mount Etna erupted making 60,000 Sicilians homeless and Prince Albert, Duke of York (George VI) married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother). On purely historical grounds one would perhaps judge 1924 more interesting: Lenin died and Stalin immediately began purging his rivals on the way to leadership of the Soviet Union; Hitler was jailed (briefly) for his role in the so-called Beer Hall Putsch; the computer giant IBM took its name; and a radio time signal was broadcast for the first time. However, 1923 does have one advantage: it is the year in which my remarkable 97-year-old mother-in-law, Frances, was born.
Frances will have lived through many tumultuous events, but a major constant throughout her life has been her love of gardening. She first indulged her passion in east Africa before coming to Tasmania where she created three gardens. The first of these was in the family home where most of the kids grew up, the second was on a rural property in the north of the state (where she lived after becoming an empty nester) and the third back in town when the property became too big to manage. The garden that she built on the rural block was simply awesome. Over a twenty-year period, she fashioned out of bare paddocks a garden of breathtaking scale and magnificence that would easily have graced the cover of a glossy magazine or been the star attraction of an open garden scheme. Although we cannot hope to emulate her achievement, her garden is something Cath and I aspire to on our own block here high above the hamlet of Franklin in the Huon Valley.
But, in my opinion, it is her final garden that is the crowning glory. When her husband’s ill heath forced them to move into town, Frances chose to start again, at the age of 79, in a house which did not have a single plant or tree in the yard. Most people at her age would have opted for a garden that was already established, but not Frances. Now, almost 20 years later, she has created another gorgeous garden, which she deprecatingly refers to as her “pocket handkerchief garden”. But the garden is no less powerful because of its size, covered as it is in riotous colour. Frances says it is a spring and autumn garden, but in reality it is glorious all year round.
When I heard that she was ill with a fever earlier in the week (not Covid related), I thought a quick trip up to the north of state to pop in and say hello would cheer her up. Of course, an altruistic visit is my cover story, and I am sticking to it, but actually I was sneaking up to check out her garden and plunder some little treasures to bring back to the Huon. So perhaps I can be forgiven for spending part of a morning loading up the car with contraband and hightailing it back here.
Today has been awesome in a terrifying sort of way. I went out early to plant the little treasures (mainly hellebores and daffodils) and to beat the weather that the radar was showing as coming up from the southwest at an alarming rate. The view down south over the Huon River is usually what Cath and I describe as dreamy, but today there was a blackness sweeping up the river that was quite menacing.
I managed to plant everything just as the first squalls passed over and have been sheltering inside ever since as howling wind and sheeting rain have battered the cottage. I am not sure what this means, maybe the gods of pocket handkerchiefs everywhere are offended ...
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