Flower Friends

Today a treat arrived in my mail box. Catalogues from Wild Flower World 
 ( www.wildflowerworld.co.nz ) and Garden Post  ( www.gardenpost.co.nz).

My life is so quiet now - ordinary and still - that these catalogues seem to be a bright spark in my day. I rush indoors -brew some coffee on the coal range and get out the catalogues. Promises . Hope. The Future.  These help when my heart feels low and heavy.Hours spent alone in a small world.

This seasons catalogues are in readiness for a coming Spring - it is full of Dahlias, Begonias , Lilies and Gladioli. I am excited. I start to pick my favourites even if my bank account tells me my dreams are not a possibility. One can dream.

In my dreams I pick masses of Dahlias which I have recently become smitten with. The Dahlia Snowflake looks like sweet round pom poms of petals. 

                                                            Dahlia Snowflake


The Glory of Heemstede a lovely waterlily type with almost translucent clear yellow flowers. They sound divine. I remember reading  about them in a book by Christopher Llloyd as he writes about his garden in Dixter in Sussex. It is my new bedtime reading . I lie in bed and imagine not some handsome hero - but a white haired old man take me through his garden and teach me how to plant and grow the most divine flowers. He is a friend .
.

The Dahlia Fire pot looks stunning in the catalogue  salmon orange with yellow  centers that they say glow like a summer's fire. I imagine them growing  in a mass  in my little secret garden. The secret garden is my newest project. I am finding it harder lately to cope with the lack of privacy here - the peering of faces over fences and screaming children. My soul seems to crave the stillness and peace of being hidden and unseen. This is something the man is unable to understand and yet for me it is an almost frantic desperate need .

 So I have found a small area of my garden where I am making a quiet spot. - a tiny strip of land wedged between our house and my neighbours high fence and line of trees. They are seldom there and when the are - it is only the hum of quiet voices through the trees . I have collected mounds of chunky driftwood logs  and made raised beds . Filled with soil and compost from a nearby farm - ( a trailer load of well rotted compost in exchange for a box of beer - barter country style ) - it will become beds with masses of flowers and plants. I go through what I have in the garden - find plants to add to it - divide and split. They will fill up quickly.

I hope to add some Dahlia bulbs that I bought recently with some birthday money from my brother. I picked Dahlia Burlesca , Dahlia Rococo , Dahlia Rembrandt  and Dahlia Fuzzy Wuzzy. These came from Bulbs Direct in New Zealand . I am excited and cant wait for them to be ready to go into some warm soil.  For us it will likely be later in October.

                                                                 Dahlia Rococo

                                                               Dahlia Burlesca                                                                        

                                                             Dahlia Fuzzy Wuzzy

                                                          Dahlia Rembrandt

 I smile as I notice all the bulbs I have picked are shades of pink. I have grown Pinky in my years...a delayed childhood perhaps or maybe the colour of a survivor  like those pink ribbons women wear to say they beat cancer / will beat cancer . For me maybe the Pink is a colour to say I am still me and still here .

I have always wanted a garden - Planted many over the years only to have to uproot and leave them - never seeing the seeds planted grow or bulbs bloom. This garden now seems like my own. For keeps. Or so I hope. It has become a friend - someone to spend the day with and to talk to when I am low and the world does not understand. It is a party to which I am always invited. It is my solace.

Back to my catalogues and the prospect of choosing more friends from the flowers. I get an email to say another catalogue is on its way to me. Happy days.