October 1, my garden guru’s birthday. Dudley Drabble was my foster father. Took me and my brother in when I was five and Chris was six. Gave us a home. Dad was insatiable for land. He turned a field into an orchard. He loved a long lawn.
I have written before about how he and Lilian, my mum, gave Christopher and I each a patch and a packet of seed. Nasturtiums for me. Marigolds for Chris. I didn’t realise until after he died that they’re the seed I’ll always sow. Though gardening never took root with Christopher.
Dad would buy land from his neighbours, a piece of a field here, the back of a rear garden there. They would be transformed into, say, a small strawberry patch by the garage. Or a red pine woodland.
Our Saturday job was to rake his acres of grass. Gather the cuttings into piles, barrow it to the compost heap. Dudley created crofts. He loved a tree-lined drive. Japanese cherry for blossom, laburnum for flower. Poplar for speed.
I was allowed to lift Dad’s new potatoes for lunch. Baby skin rubbed off by Mum’s thumb. A small slab of salted butter.
We grew apart for a while, Mum and Dad and me. They were in their 60s in the 70s. Generations older than other people’s parents. And Chris by then was in the army.
They sold Heron’s Reach by the river. Too good an offer. Too big to mow. Downsized to a small house by the sea. He bought a patch of land next to it, grew tomatoes in his greenhouse. Later still, the last place, plants in pots, a perfect view from a picture window.
My gardening would be too wild for him. His every inch had to earn its place. Perhaps every person, too. But echoes of him and Chris and Lilian are there in the nasturtium bank, the marigolds. The early morning growing. His freshly picked peas. Happy birthday, Dad.
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