Page 5 - News and Views Autumn WInter 2024

Leaving my garden beautiful Laura Sunderland

Perhaps there are several Friends within Area Meeting who have had to make the same decision which I
needed to make last year. It was time to leave my big house and garden and take up residence in a much
smaller abode.

Old age creeps up on us. Well, there’s a surprise!! I should probably have moved a long time ago, but my
home was full of memories of my late husband; it was big enough to put up my family and I loved the
garden, with the visiting birds and other wild life. So, I stayed and stayed. The period of life of
“lockdown” when I was unable to obtain any help in the garden and grew older myself, brought home to
me the inevitable truth. I needed to move to a smaller home, and I have been lucky enough to find a
convenient flat.

Today drifts of cumulus clouds are piled high against a blue background, moving and changing as the
wind takes them. Before leaving “Dolphins” my home for the last forty years, I wrote a description of
the outlook from my kitchen window, which has given me so much joy. It was a day of fair weather and
sea breezes –

My overgrown buddlia, lacking gardening attention during “lockdown”, has long spindly branches, which
are tossing about in the wind, the late September sunshine has attracted numbers of butterflies and
bees to its branches. Red admiral and peacock butterflies flutter around, or pause for a moment to
spread their radiant wings, basking in the warmth of the sun whilst bees methodically explore the long,
purple flowers.

I have not been filling the bird -feeders knowing that I am soon to depart and did not wish the birds to
have wasted journeys. However, the bird bath is still in use, as it refills after each showers of rain. Today
I am watching a blackbird enjoying himself. He almost fills the small space and luxuriates in there,
ruffling his feathers and sipping the water.

The hedge once so neatly trimmed, is now wildly overgrown. Long strands of honeysuckle and roses
fight each other for space and light and a few late flowers struggle through the tangle. The lawn is equal-
ly overgrown. The long grass sporting foot-high daisies and coltsfoot. It would be impossible to mow the
lawn, now littered with windfall apples. They are bramley cookers with a sharp delicious flavour. If I
were staying here I would make blackberry and apple jam, as wild blackberries grow in the hedges which
surround the back lawn. Earlier in the year I was able to make gooseberry jam and enjoy rhubarb crum-
bles. How I will miss the regular seasonal harvest! I must reconcile myself with the elderly person I have
become.

It is time to leave my garden bountiful and return to the house. There is still packing to be done. The
moving men will be here tomorrow to transport me and my worldly goods to a new home.
Goodbye to “Dolphins” my home for the last forty years. Thank-you for so many happy memories. Now
a new life awaits! There will be more time for reading and writing, new friends I have yet to meet and I
know I will have a lovely outlook from my first-floor window. I am lucky to have good family support,
music to play and all my dear Quaker connections.

I send my love to you all.

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