It is May, my daughter Kala’s birthday month. Time also to top-up pots and window boxes. Time to find room for another climbing rose. The rituals of our year.
I have been busy gathering seed for Kala’s summer. A bit manically, of course. This year’s new obsession is zinnias, an old-school garden flower, bright and beautiful. There are multiple packets of cosmos in almost every colour. There are new poppies, though last year’s have burst through already, plus the seed we saved. And always nasturtiums, sunflowers, too, and various calendula; it wouldn’t be our family without them.
It is time for our annual spring trip to the garden centre, to refresh summer planting. We help choose her geraniums, and all go for hanging ivy-leaf this year: lipstick pink for Kala, a deeper red for us. We buy cottage-garden lupins in a cheery lemon yellow and moody dark crimson. Inspired by Kala’s poppies, we choose a few for our rooftop pots. Our trollies fill. We buy just too much. We sit and have tea and cake, satisfied with our shopping.
We jam in the car, surrounded by summer. Flowers fill every inch, a family comedy, like a Monsieur Hulot’s holiday. We help carry each other’s pots and flowers to the door. We are laden down with love.
There will be a new white clematis climbing Kala’s fence, and a new mower to cut the grass.
She lives a few doors from us. From where I sit I can see her tulips, the greening jasmine leaf, the buds on the roses we bought her. We can always tell how happy she is by how often we see her outside.
Kala’s window boxes overlook our bus stop, my route to the shop for this Sunday paper. We will watch them grow, like we once watched her. A happy family of flowers.
Order Morning: How to Make Time by Allan Jenkins, for £7.91, from guardianbookshop.com
.png?w=600)
