Page 42 of The Garden of Forgotten Wishes
I found all the tools in a small shed by the greenhouse and filled a wooden trug with everything I thought I’d need. They had a few of those big, woven green garden bags, too.
I began to tidy the overgrown shapes of the lavender bushes into neat mounds, like little islands, working my way along the meandering crazy-paving path. There were three woody rosemary bushes that would have to come out, but since they’d take a lot of digging and hacking to get the roots up, I left them for later.
There was the over-rampant Rambling Rector, too. He ought to be firmly dealt with, but I’d borrow the long leather gauntlets from next door before I tackled that.
After an hour or so, the sun was fully up and I cleaned and put away the tools in the shed, then went through to the Grace Garden, where no one was to be seen, if you didn’t count the peacocks, though the lights in the office were already on, so Ned must have been in there, working.
In my rucksack I now had keys to the Potting Shed and Grace Garden, as well as the big ring of keys for Lavender Cottage and the River Walk, so I jangled like a gaoler when I walked.
I’d left the heavy gauntlets and other tools from yesterday together and someone had replenished the big stack of empty garden bags. I helped myself to some plastic plant markers from a box on the end of one of the workbenches, then dumped everything into the small green wheelbarrow I’d used yesterday, which I’d already started to think of as my own, as you do.
I was more organized this morning and had a small notebook and pen in my dungaree pocket, so I could jot down any details I noticed about the roses as I went. I’d even remembered to put my new phone in a zipped pocket in my gilet, so it wouldn’t fall out into the nearest bucket of water or the pond and die a watery death, like most of my previous ones.
I assumed Ned had already fed the fish, since they weren’t hangingabout in a crowd at the surface, looking like hungry teenagers, but were just a glimmer in the depths. He must have made as early a start as I had.
I started by collecting the two or three old metal plant markers I’d noticed in the beds next to the bit of path I’d cleared and replacing them with plastic ones. The roses all seemed to be old, unfamiliar varieties so far, so it was just as well they had the tags, because it’s often nigh on impossible to guess what a rose is until it flowers, and even then it can be hard.
Then I took up where I’d left off yesterday. I’d uncovered the path for quite a long way, but since I was heading along one side of the wider end of the wedge, I probably had at least as far to go again.
In my head I was now Dora the Explorer, hacking my way through to goodness knows what, turning a dank, overgrown tunnel back into a light-pervaded pathway.
I had to be careful, because some of the thorns on the branches were huge and vicious, though most were small and less likely to pierce through my clothing.
After a while I found I was singing ‘Follow the Yellow Brick Road’ as I worked, though now the parts I’d revealed yesterday were cleaned off a bit, the path wasn’t so much yellow as a beautiful patchwork in shades of old rose pink and orange.
I’d filled four large bags and was going for the fifth, when that familiar deep voice suddenly broke into my song.
‘I’ve brought you a cup of coffee, Dorothy, but no oil for the Tin Man.’
I turned and there was Ned, holding one of those bamboo travel beakers with a lid.
I straightened, tossed a long and viciously barbed stem into the bag and said, gratefully, ‘Oh, thanks, I could really do with that! I must remember to start bringing a flask with me as well as my water bottle.’
‘It’s nearly eleven and I saw you heading here hours ago, so I thought you’d lost track of time again.’
‘I had, but that’s very easy to do. I’m determined to get all the way to the back wall today, and then I assume the path just goes up the other side to the pond again.’
‘I think so,’ Ned agreed.
I took the lid off the cup and a lovely aroma met my nostrils.
‘I think that Java stuff woke me up this morning,’ Ned said. ‘I had a really good idea for the design for an awkward-shaped garden first thing, soon after I’d had some.’
‘I thought you must be working on a design when I saw the lights were on in the office.’
‘I was, but since then I’ve been digging out the pond area in the Grace Garden a bit more. Gert’s been helping me. James is sanding and painting plant tags, so I’ll take these new ones you’ve found back with me.’
He rubbed the dirt off one and said, ‘“Double White”? That could be almost anything.’
‘The ones I’ve found so far sound like the old names, but we’ll see what they’re like when they flower.’
‘I’ve ordered that extra sign, explaining what we’re doing in here, though it’ll probably arrive after the others do. But I’ve got plenty of those moveable rope-and-post barriers to put across the paths we don’t want the visitors to go down. In here, we’ll confine them round the fish pond for the present. They can watch you vanishing into the brambles from there.’
‘I don’t mind an audience. One or two of the châteaux where I worked had gardens open to the public, as is the one at my family’s house. It’s called the Château du Monde because it has one of those gardens with the beds laid out to represent various parts of the world.’
‘I’d like to see that.’
‘It had got a bit overgrown, and there were some inappropriate additions, but Aunt Em’s got it looking wonderful now.’
