Just been for my annual hunt for marguerites - bright, cheerful daisy-like flowers that will gladden my heart from now until the first frosts. My auntie/godmother introduced them to me, buying me some plants to put in pots for my back yard when I lived in my terrace house. I plant them every year at 88 as a homage to her. Dead head them and they just keep coming. Pick a few for a small vase or float the flower heads in a pretty bowl of water. I also have grape hyacinths which are up at the moment for her. I always regret that I didn't dig those little deep blue grape arrows up from her garden when she passed and transfer them to a pot. But I didn't and I lost the continuity, the handing on down but never mind.
My auntie loved gardening. She was I suppose from the old fashioned school of horticulture with lots of bedding plants and separate rose bushes around a green square of grass. I swear she sometimes swept that soil - there wasn't a weed to be detected. Her garden always looked loved and tendered. It was her pleasure.
It was all the more tragic when she suffered a debilitating stroke in her early sixties just as she had retired. She could no longer garden herself after that and I think it broke her heart really. She died in 2005 but every year I think of her with love and fondness when I see the grape hyacinths and I plant the marguerites. Here's to you, Auntie Ivy x
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