It is Kala’s birthday this weekend. I am hoping we will celebrate in her garden, with cake and suitable distance. She’d planned to spend it in Denmark. I sometimes feel I won’t cope if we, too, can’t go soon. I conjure the hepatica in my head, the greening of the larch, the lilac-lined cycle tracks, the swallows, the cuckoos, the wild orchids, the swooning lapwing, the sound of sea on sand.
Kala has been ill and isolated, so I’ve been doing daily drops at her door – she lives four houses away. I’d leave packages on the step, ring the bell and then move back to talk to her. Luckily, she made a good recovery a few weeks ago, though we are still very under-hugged.
I watch her from my window, in her garden. See her trim her jasmine, sow the nasturtiums I put through her letterbox, hear her mow her grass.
This weekend we will finish sowing her annual flowers: nasturtiums, zinnia, sunflowers, calendula, cosmos, lots of poppies, assorted old-school others that have caught my eye since last summer.
Kala will look bemused by the giant bag of seed packets I’ll bring over. I’ll shrug it off. You can never have too much of a good thing, I’ll say, while we remember last year’s sunflower forest and how much needed transplanting to the plot.
We’ll take turns sowing. We start with good intentions, a frugal discipline, but I then sneak back over the spots we’ve sown and spread a few handfuls more. Luckily, Kala’s plan this year is wild abundance, so I think we will be fine.
She came late to growing, Kala. Her garden was a sun trap, grass was for lying on, a terrace was where to eat. But now there is lavender and honeysuckle, clematis, jasmines, a few climbing roses. She has a feel for it. And every birthday I get to see my daughter becoming a gifted gardener.
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