The first pond
Chapter 7
Although I’d grown very fond of the gasworks when I find a house in Oxford with a municipal park beyond the railings at the bottom of the back garden, I quickly buy it. By the time the purchase is complete and I move in, Dan and I have ceased to be a couple. We seemed to have run out of lover-energy (what ever that is) and become good friends instead, which I am glad of.
My new garden has the same scraggy lawn which seems common to so many houses. This lawn doesn’t even have a trimming of borders owing to the tall hedges on either side. A straight path runs slap bang down the middle. Perfect, a blank canvas for me to go mad with.
As this is my second go at designing a garden I’m much more confident about what I want to create. Splashing out a considerable amount of my new found wealth from the Best Seller, I commission a wood framed custom-built conservatory. When it’s completed I have gained a light airy room running right across the back of the house.
Down a little step from the french windows, I lay a patio, and dot it here and there with my new passion, planted up recycled tins. These are tall ghee tins begged from the Indian restaurant where I get my Friday night take away meals. I paint the tins in swirls and splatters of colour and then fill them with whatever cuttings I’ve been gifted.
I plan to divide the long thin plot into three rooms, as we experienced designers like to call them.
A friend who has trained in the art of dry stone walling, builds me a low wall with Cotswold stone which completes the first area. The new wall has gaps in its top where I squeeze in bits of mauve aubretia. It stretches across the width of the garden, bifurcated with a willow arch. The arch which I think will be simple to erect, has other ideas. Wobbly from the start, it collapses quite soon under the double weight of a russian vine and a summer jasmine. Both are keen and vigorous growers, wonderful for the impatient gardener, but within months, requiring almost daily pruning to allow anyone to force their way through the arch at all.
In the meantime, in the house, a handy man from Dan’s commune cuts a big lozenge shaped doorway in the wall between the smallest bedroom, which I plan to sleep in, and the bedroom next to it which is my new studio.
The tiny bedroom is on a cold corner of the house. I insulate the walls by nailing old duvets onto them and then attaching charity shop red blankets over the top. A pink Tree Of Life cotton bedspread is suspended over the ceiling. After ripping a number of garments as I step through the bedroom door hole, I move padding the rough edges to the top of my list. First it’s wrapped in soft cushion foam and then covered with silk, pink silk. The newly built in bed is exactly the right height for me to sit up and watch the dawn arriving or snuggle with a book without being seen by the other neighbours if they happen to be out in their gardens. A friend stepping through the door-hole for a look says “It feels like a combination of a womb and a tart’s parlour, no offence intended”. The house now feels like home to me as I’ve got the colours that I want on the walls. The kitchen did get painted three times before I found the right shade of pink.
My daughter comes up from London to stay. She’s now a professional painter and decorator and she paints the dingy grey pebbledash on the outside of the house. Despite her fear of standing on scaffolding, she gives the house a party dress of pale pink paint.
By now I’ve found myself another good therapist, though she doesn’t explore the possible deeper meaning of my choice of bedroom. I’m gathering more information about my relationship with myself and others through a number of therapy groups. The Women’s Encounter Group is the one I find scariest. Sitting in a circle you could ask the other members to tell you how they experience you. I do this. “Funny, kind, arrogant sometimes”, says one woman. I thank her and stick my chin up. “Very generous but somehow a bit stand-offish”, says another. I thank her too and paste a bright smile on. “What are you doing with the information you’re getting Viv?”, asks the therapist. After having a ponder I say truthfully, “I’m giving myself ticks and crosses but only paying attention to the crosses.” “I thought that was what you are doing” says the therapist and then she asks the rest of the group to only give me positive feedback. They do and I can’t believe the nice things that they say about me. I cry the place down and wonder if my parents missed something or got it wrong when they were telling me what a bad person I was.
Through therapy groups I meet Bob who is also hoping to sort himself out. After a while we have a serious discussion about how we like each other very much but neither of us is ready to begin a new relationship. We’ve been together ever since. He brought two black cats with him, Basil and Poppy whom he later claimed were his dowry though we didn’t marry for some years. Due to the insights into my relationship issues, gleaned during therapy, I now had a check list of essentials in a partner. Honesty, humour, kindness, integrity, Bob could tick all these boxes. Gardener was not mentioned as a requirement.
A year had raced by, and I was itching to press on with the next garden plans. The deposit on the house, new architect designed conservatory and the first round of dry stone walls had swallowed most of the remaining Best Selling Book fund. My income as a freelance cartoonist was erratic but I cautiously expected a lump of cash from a promised future project. An educational publisher had asked me to do the cartoons for a large job that would be starting soon. I didn’t dare give the landscape gardeners the go ahead for the pond and other ideas I’d envisioned until I’d definitely been commissioned. When I had a signed contract and knew how much I’d be paid, I was going to choose as much of my landscaping plans as I could afford.
As spring drifts into summer and feeling very presumptuous, I phone the editor and ask when the project is due to start. “Oh, it’s been shelved”, she says. As I splutter my disappointment she asks me how much money I need for my garden project. I name the full amount. “Well,” she says, “I’ll need eight front covers for a new series that we are launching, that should fund it.” I do the covers and the garden landscaper goes ahead with the entire plan. The covers win the editor and myself a design award which is rather nice.
I’ve fallen into all the ponds we’ve made, except this first one. The design is inspired by one I’ve seen in the garden of some new friends. Theirs was a raised oval and built of red brick with walls a bit higher than a dining room table. I wanted ours to be about knee high with the walls made of cream Cotswold stone. It would be round with a diameter of approximately two metres and topped with stone flags wide enough to sit on, with your feet up. Possibly with a gin and tonic in your hand and a bowl of crisps beside you.
When the landscapers have finished, it looks as if it has been there for ever. A sculpture and pond all in one. In the far side of it a slightly raised area is supposed to create a bog garden. This doesn’t stay boggy for long but fills quickly with self-seeded valerian which looks nice in a different way.
Bob and I install some Koi carp, Terry and June. Over the years they grow to quite a size before I discover Terry half eaten on the path. Not being able to bring myself to pick up the gory remains I wait for Bob to come home. By the time he arrives Terry has been moved to a couple of new locations, the remains being smaller each time I rediscover them. June meets a similar fate a few weeks later. We assume that one of our cats is guilty, despite their innocent stares into the distance.
After a while the pond becomes covered in a thick carpet of duckweed. This may be why one day when Poppy is chasing her brother around the raised slabs, she decides to close the gap by taking a short cut across the green surface. She makes it to the middle through sheer momentum before starting to sink and having to swim to the other side. She scrambles out, plastered in duckweed and sits up on the wall licking one shoulder as if she had planned on having a swim and is now towelling down.
A line of railings creates the boundary between us and the park which means that we now have a very nice borrowed view of mature trees and lawns. Sometimes it reminds me of a pointillist painting of George Seurat’s. One of the ones with people dotted about having picnics in the summer, old women with linked arms and small steps. Dog owners watching their dogs meet and play. I was surprised to notice that the young man with nose rings and ripped jeans conscientiously bagged up his dog’s poo whilst some of the more conventional looking owners ignored the mess that their pets left on the ground.
One of my favourite walks in this park is a long avenue of horse chestnut trees. Every year they put out their tall upright flowers, for all the world like candles standing on the branches. The flower beds are planted imaginatively without mathematical symmetry or that combination of red, yellow, and electric blue that simply shouts at you. Plants are grouped rather than lined up. And the colour mixtures are surprising, pink and orange with touches of lilac, purple and russet with some silver foliage. I see my first ever goldfinches in the tall grasses at the park entrance.
One day I’m having a cup of coffee in the conservatory and reading the Oxford local paper. “Botanical Gardens employee assaulted by member of the public” is the headline. Followed by “Our gardeners are highly trained and we will not tolerate them being abused in this way”. I’m puzzled, does that mean that if it’s an unskilled lad who sweeps the paths you can bash him as much as you like and that would be fine?
Once I had discovered them, I loved the Oxford Botanical Gardens and often popped in on my way into town, leaning my bike on the wall and entering slightly timidly (not being at all trained), through the rather splendid Cotswold stone entrance arch. The gardens had lots of high sheltering walls with clematis and roses climbing up them. Stone archways led from one room to another created an aura of privacy and quiet. The plants weren’t packed in or particularly boisterous, perhaps they were highly trained not to be. This added to the sense of peace and stillness.
Back in my own garden the raised pond was part of a bigger plan which had been my dream for ages. The garden lover would drift, perhaps with a glass of something chilled in hand, across the patio area, wandering dreamily through the arch between the low walls and come across the pond. After a pause perched on it’s edge and gazing at the graceful movements of the fish the discoveries would continue.
The wanderer, perhaps down to half a glass now, would pass the area of fenced-in grass for our rabbits, Ruby and Rachel, appreciating the willow planted in that enclosure, actually, doing this quickly before the rabbits chewed it to a stump as it turned out that willow was their favourite food. We just kept sticking new willow prunings in.
Further down through another set of low stone walls, the intrepid yet deeply relaxed observer would reach the last room. This would have a raised circular bed edged with Cotswold stone with the old pear tree at it’s centre. Running alongside it would be the smallest meadow in the world built on top of the pile of rubble provided by building the conservatory. The rubble provided the excellent drainage that a wild flower meadow needs although sadly, none of the carefully sown flowers came up. Finally the stone benches that Bob had built would be sat upon and a period of peaceful reflection would be enjoyed. Until the explorer realised that their glass was empty and went back up the garden for a top up.
The whole plan was carried out. It was beautiful. Then I realised that something was missing.