Gardens gorse and jam

Tuesday 31 January 2012

I’ve done it, I’ve written every day for a whole 31 days. So what am I going to write about today?

Some days I don’t know what I will write until I get started. Today is no exception.

The cousin we visited over the weekend said that when our mutual grandparents lived in Doddinghurst  Granddad had a huge garden. I told her that he gardened in NZ too. I remember him down on his knees with a large round garden sieve trying, unsuccessfully, to eliminate oxalis. The small plant that is cultivated here as a pretty flower is a darn nuisance back home. Across the road from us is a small roadside garden is a prickly yellow flowered shrub called gorse. Every time we walk past it I have a little chuckle to myself at this sickly looking plant that is being cosseted is a nuisance weed back home.  

The house in Tama Street was on about a quarter of an acre .Divided almost equally, if I remember rightly, by a high hedge. Within the huge clump of bamboo at the right end of the hedge was the dumping area for the mown grass. Always warm and sweet smelling, it was lovely and soft to climb up on. Granddad’s shed was at the opposite end of the hedge. His sanctum, that smelled of birdseed. Here were his pride and joy, in the form of raucous budgies, breeding birds.  One of them, Noddy, became a family pet. Patient as a saint, Granddad had taught Noddy to wolf whistle and to say who’s a pretty boy then. He was a pretty boy who could give you a nasty nip if he was teased too much.

At the very back of the section was a huge lemon tree that was always loaded. Well that is until someone sneaked over the back fence, picked every one and made off with them. Granddad was furious. Lemons that provided the juice to top Mum’s yummy pancakes. Try as I might mine never taste as good. Granddad also grew the bushes that produced  sour tiny purple beads that Mum turned into the scrummiest royal purple treat. . Filling the house with the warm sweet syrupy smell of blackcurrant jam. Yum