The Garden Makeover
Storytelling
Hello everyone and welcome to my latest update, this week I’m channelling my inner storyteller rather than sharing a writing prompt.
Twice a month I host a small but perfectly formed writing group here in the lovely village of Portesham. The first session of the month is an equivalent of the writing gym and is where we take a topic (at the moment we’re discussing background) and play with writing prompts as we learn how to understand how this impacts our writing. Inevitably, I end up with lots of half-started stories and the occasional bit of poetry, begun but never completed. So, it seems this might be a useful place to carry on what I start in the workshops.
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The show team arrived early for filming today. All wagons, vans and catering trucks. I hadn’t realised there would be so many juggling for space in our tiny cul-de-sac. And so many people tramping through the kitchen dragging tools, heaving barrows laden with soil, and plants; so many plants. If I’d realised it would be so busy I’d have warned the neighbours.
Alan arrived first. He was lovely, but a bit distracted, said he had to go off and open a garden centre at two so needed to get his bit out of the way early, but he’d be back tomorrow.
How showed me the plan and I smiled and nodded. I didn’t really like it, there was nowhere for the whirligig for a start and what about the birds? But they told me to smile and nod, noddies they called them, so I did!
My dahlias were the first to be uprooted. I wept quietly, remembering how long it had taken Bert and I to choose the bulbs, prepare the bed and then plant them.
Lizzie had arranged it all, said it was everything I deserved after all the effort I’d put into the local community over the years, and I’d be able to enjoy the garden again when it was easier to get around. She meant well, I know that, but I enjoyed the garden as it was, its memories surrounding me whenever I stepped out of the back door.
The next thing to go was the shed. Bert had spent years perfecting the shed, adding, taking away, and refining outside and inside. I imagined him turning in his grave at the desecration being done to ‘his place’. We’d even had a sign put up over the door, ‘Bert’s Place’ it said. At least they gave the sign to me and didn’t put it in the skip lurking out front. All that time, money and effort was removed in less than thirty minutes. I brushed the tears aside as the camera crew came in for a close-up, plastered a smile on my face, and nodded when instructed.
Charlie arrived after Alan left, to do the water feature. There was always a water feature, there had to be a water feature. I wondered where they’d get the power supply for the pump and then a yellow hard hat caught my eye bobbing up and down in the living room window with a drill running silently behind the double glazing.
I had to go upstairs when they started taking out my lavender hedge. I’d always looked after it, we’d joked it was my bit of the garden to do. I’d trimmed, snipped and replaced plants as they got leggy. It was a refuge to sit with and talk to after Bert died. The first cutting had come with me when we moved in, a gift from mother, the rest I’d nurtured as the years went on.
By the end of the day, the garden was bare of anything that reminded me of, well me, and Bert of course. There were raised beds and half-finished paths with smart new slabs. A different shed was going up on the other side of the garden from where it had been. Apparently, I’d get more sun, as if I’d spend hours sitting in the sun getting a tan. I never had and wouldn’t be starting now. But Lizzie liked it, she ooo’d and ahh’d over all the changes and made encouraging comments about how easy it would be to manage now I was ‘getting on’.
Alan came back and we did more noddies. And then they banned me from looking outside, put paper over all the windows at the back so I couldn’t peek. But the neighbours could and Gillian next door kept me up to date with what they were doing. Not that it mattered, I wasn’t really that interested, to be honest, but I showed willing and said ‘wow’ and ‘oh and ‘really’ at appropriate times in the conversation.
Alan took me out for a coffee to have a chat about my work in the community. I was a bit embarrassed if truth be told, after all it was just what anyone would do, wasn’t it? It seems not, it seems it’s no longer normal to be neighbourly, to be interested in other people and to notice if they don’t seem right. The coffee was nice though, and the bun, it was all cream and jam, my favourite.
I’d got used to the melee by the end of the week and, when the gardeners and builders were packing up, I was a bit sad. We had lots of lovely chats over tea and biscuits through the week and I was going to miss the company. Soon enough though, it came time for the big reveal. Lizzie was there, and Alison and Jamie and their two as well. The neighbours all walked through, I hadn’t seen so many people in my little house before. I had to wear an eye mask before being led out into the garden by Alan. His hand was warm, his arm was steady and he was very gentle when I almost tripped over the kitchen doorstep.
And there it was, my new garden. So unlike my old garden, I cried and everyone assumed it was tears of joy and smiled and laughed and raised their glasses of champagne as I realised that Bert was no longer there.
Mentoring
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With love, light, and laughter
Linda
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