7 2009-10-27T17:45:38+01:00 false 9.05am While I was wrestling with R. Sunrise yesterday (why do I chose roses with huge thorns), I noticed that the bud on the Clematis Mme Julia had opened making two flowers blooming. They are about 6 or 7ft up the trellis which is attached to the the house, namely my part of the house whose insulation has not been renewed giving them a certain amount of warmth and protection. My mother died of heart failure yesterday, sitting in her comfortable chair in her own apartment. She was nearly 95 and had been finding life increasingly difficult. A long healthy life and a quick easy death, what more can one ask for. One of the interests that we shared was gardening, and that started me thinking about the gardens I grew up with. It made me realize that I was aware of gardens from a very early age. Our own garden behind an ordinary suburban bungalow was full of perennials - oriental poppies, phlox, delphiniums, crocosmia, honeysuckle, a dark purple clematis with enourmous flowers, and escaping from a neighbour's a rambling rose with tiny cream buds and soft white flowers mingled with summer jasmine. My mother's sisters were gardeners too, both having walled gardens behind Victorian houses in the city area that they had grown up in. I don't remember that they grew anything out of the ordinary but those spaces are a vivid memory. For many years, my Mother lived in a house on a hill above a park which had a lake with ducks and swans, and rowing boats for hire, islands that were left wild and shrubberies with camellias and rhododendrons, perennial geraniums and other shade loving plants that had not yet come into fashion again. The park also had greenhouses, one tropical, and a formal rose garden with a path through arches of climbing roses at one side. Along the steam that came from the lake were treed, shadowy, secret paths with bridges and benches. My mother walked in that park almost every day and got much pleasure from it. In fact that park was one of a series of linked parks with a stream from the lake running through them that went from my mother's house to my aunt's. The Victorians and the Edwardians left a great legacy when they created those parks in the centre of a city. Admittedly the grander, middleclass houses were built around the edge of the parks but behind were streets of working class houses within easy reach of open spaces and beauty. Photos: the bench under the spruce mostly protected from snow through the winter acts as storage for planters, etc; Autumn crocuses look so fragile yet were almost the only plants standing in the snow; the yellow leaves of gentian. 1 false 70138 false false false Entry 2009-10-27T01:00:00+01:00 DMY 85694 Public 2009-10-27T17:50:51+01:00 1175 Cloudy 1 C