My Nana was a German migrant of strong character and lots of pragmatism and practicality. For me, her garden was a world of magic, and it's quite likely my own garden twenty odd years later would mirror this and become a place other children would love, just as I did hers. Right in the dark corner was the wooden wall of her compost heap and a pile of old tools that us kids - my cousin and my sister - would use, sawing away and hammering just for the fun of it. I'm sure she left them down there just for us. Nana didn't have toys. She had tools. She was cool.
I'd like to be that kind of cool Nana. Maybe my maze of a garden is a mirror of that. Although she never saw my garden, sometimes I imagine her ghost there.
At the heart of her garden was a huge old apricot tree. It supplied bounty of golden fruit when the days grew warm. The sweet, sun-warmed apricots were nothing like any apricot I've tasted since. Their juice dripped down my chin. She wouldn't let me climb the ladder. As I said, she was practical. A ladder was a tool, not a toy. She would let me help spoon the cooling stewed apricot compote into margarine containers for the freezer, though.
When my grandson visits, I pop raspberries and blackcurrants in his mouth and he looks at me with his big eyes. I plant fruit trees and decorate them with plastic bags to scare the birds like she used to.
I remember the skin on her arms was thin and always scratched and bleeding, the way older woman's will do, and the way mine are starting to do now. She'd had a life. Those arms had held three children, nursed men in the second world war, folded hospital linen, typed documents in her secretarial job.
But the true alchemy of her garden lay in the kartoffelpuffer, a German potato pancake that she'd load up with parsley. I remember her small scythe she'd cut the parsley with - great bunches of it. We were allowed to eat as much of that green, pungent herb as we wanted. I remember the small fork she'd use to pluck potatoes from the earth. I can still feel that sense of wonder that my Nana could grow her own food, harvest it, and turn it into delicious savoury pancakes. The parsley that self seeds in my garden is a welcome guest. I pluck leaves and nibble it, and think of her.
The dirt would be washed in her the outdoors laundry sink, and then they'd be grated them by hand. She'd add finely chopped onions, a sprinkle of salt, a huge amount of parsley, and then plop large spoonfuls into hot oil, transforming them into glorious pancakes, crispy and soft and salty, and rich and redolent with the parsley.
She'd do it without stories, without fanfare, without fuss - just garden to plate, food as necessity. It wasn't magic for her, just for me. She didn't have time for magic.
Still, though, reflecting, the apricot trees, the potatoes and herbs, the skills she had to grow her own food - this I inherited, carrying the legacy of generations, all the woman before her.
In the warm embrace of Nana's suburban garden, the most wondrous treasures were found in the simplest of things, from rusting tools down by the compost heap to the ladle used to spoon apricots or the battered old grater used to grate potatoes.
But the tools she'd truly handed me wasn't really something you could grasp in your hand. It was more about knowing you could run a backyard in that way - a place of resilience, sustenance, and magic for small children.
This post was written in response to the prompt in the #creativegarden Hive Garden this week, about whose influence might be seen in your garden.
