Letters to Ann

JoDear Ann,

I can’t remember all that I did back then but I did pull, cut, & uproot, working hard at making a transformation.  It was no mean feat & resulted in a huge mass in front of me to dispose of.  I hired a chipper to mulch it all up & with the help of my friend, Pat & her husband, Colin we had a mountain of good mulch to use.

Dawn’s garden in early 2012

He & Pat came to help me for weeks on end & Colin would go to the hardware store with his station sedan & trailer to get soil & whatever else was needed to give it a good face lift. Colin showed me how to plant a hedge with fifty plants I had purchased for that purpose & twelve years later that hedge has grown to make a sturdy outline around the garden.

I am not a good gardener & most of my efforts have been trial & error but I have enjoyed it.  Over the years I have had some success with roses & azaleas which, at one stage, brought positive remarks from people passing by who would comment on the results.  It did look very pretty back then.  

However, ultimately it started  to fade, some of the plants were beyond their use by date & needed some TLC.  Then the garden took on a new look as my very dear & young friend, Narelle, brought up from her garden in Sydney, heaps of Cliveas & Agapanthus & planted them in & amongst the Roses & Azaleas.

After Narelle and David’s update

However, with my setback in health two years ago the garden became overgrown with weeds & looked so uncared for it became an eyesore & had the resemblance of a jungle again.  However, one door shuts & another one opens & in this case it was Hammond Care who talked to my son David & myself when I was in hospital.

It was decided that I should no longer do my housework & my life changed. I cannot praise this firm highly enough for what they have done for me in the past two years.  They have been amazing in taking care of my needs, not only in the house but in many other ways also.

Rebecca is an Executive on the committee of Hammond Care who calls on me frequently & has become a friend as well.  When she mentioned to me a few months back that I had so many hours banked & would I like a gardener to help me in that area, I virtually jumped at this proposal.

The result being that John, the gardener, came to see me.  He was just so nice telling me that he looked after his Gran for ten years & if I liked he & his wife would bring me cooked meals. That was back when I was still recuperating after weeks in hospital.  This was totally off his own bat & not from Hammond Care.  

I didn’t need to accept his kind offer as I was getting well quite quickly & able to look after myself with the cancer not taking over my life – as was expected by the medical team – but I couldn’t help think how there is so many good people in this world who go without any accolades into what they give of themselves.

Dawn’s Old Garden. 29/10/2016

 The outcome of John entering my life was that he would take over the garden; remove all the Cliveas & Agapanthus that Narelle had so lovingly put in the ground for me & totally revamp the whole garden replacing them when it was all done.

Basically the whole the garden was uprooted. Trees that I had inherited when I moved here were completely removed & discarded, as was most of the azaleas which had seen better days.  

John brought in fertiliser to help the poor clay soil that I inherited.  Then he brought in loads of chips for the whole area as well as replanting the Cliveas & Agapanthus, which he had carefully put into pots until the garden was ready to accept them again.

In it’s place the whole area sported, as a centre piece, my pedestal holding a plant which will flow over & fall down giving a great effect.  The only other thing there at the moment is a border of mondo  grass, one Clivea & two stones which my niece gave me years ago saying ‘My Garden’ & ‘Enjoy’.  All this is on a setting of white pebbles.   I was absolutely delighted with the transformation.

Dawn’s new Garden outside the lounge room window. 25/9/2016

Then as the main garden was transformed I was equally as delighted & will never tire of drinking it in.  The Cliveas & Agapanthus were all restored with other exotic plants put here & there that were taken from my bush garden (another very large part of my garden) & it was looking lovely.  

I had a huge orange blossom tree in one section of the garden that I brought here twelve years ago in a pot. When it looked pot bound & sorry for itself I shoved in the garden thinking if it survives well & good & if it doesn’t, so be it.

It grew & blossomed & now provides shade in one area. John suggested that a little seat would be good there as it was in the shade & would provide a lovely spot for me to sit, read & maybe enjoy a glass of wine.  

I mentioned this to David & the same day he came down with a seat that he had discarded.  John took it home, applied oils etc. bringing it back to take pride of place in a gorgeous spot above the stepping stones.  David also supplied some blue cushions for my garden seat & with the blue agapanthus it looks charming.  

My new garden seat in the shade.

Greg & I had a wine or two one evening there to christen it & it was magic.  The world can be a beautiful place, my garden is part of it & I intend to enjoy it to the full.

My new garden. Nov. 2016

I have today changed some of my house cleaning hours so that John & his team, can visit the garden for two hours every fortnight to take charge of unwanted weeds & anything else that needs some TLC.   He will also be able to tidy up my ‘bush garden’ which is another big area which is full of this & that: things I have put in there from time to time including a plant which has suddenly taken off after twelve years & reputed to be the last plant on planet earth that the Dinosaurs ate.  I am thrilled about that, it has taken a long time!

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