Friday, July 10, 2009

Flowers remind me of my childhood

It seems I never get tired of photographing flowers. When I was child I used to visit the little old lady who lived next door. I think she was probably 45 but to me as a 4 year old she seemed very old. Little she was. Not much taller than me at the time, she used to give me a trowel and a bucket and we would spend hours pulling out the weeds. She taught me about all kinds of things. She would rub mint in her hands and let me smell and taste it, she showed me how to prune hydrangeas and she told me stories about everything in the garden. I learnt that papyrus had been the first paper and that bees pollinated the flowers. There were 2 things that took me back to her garden, the roses and the rides in the wheelbarrow. Once the barrow was full Mary would take it down to the pile of cuttings on the front lawn that faced Sydney Harbour, then I climbed onto the wheelbarrow for the ride back to the garden. At the end of the day she would light a fire and we would watch all the old leaves go up in smoke as sail boats bobbed up and down on the harbour. She loved her rose gardens and also her poppy garden. One spring the poppy garden was not replanted. Years later I found out that they had been opium poppies and that she grew them because they were beautiful.

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