Gardening Australia

I was just watching Gardening Australia on the ABC.  People were commenting on their earliest memories of gardening.  When I was a girl, well when I was four I spent every day outside in the garden.  I remember feasting on rose leaves, shiny bright green hedge leaves and of course sour sobs.  I was always hungry so a bit of judicious grazing was preferable to starving waiting for Mum to call me in to eat.  She was working for the doctor in Woodville. He had a large garden, roses and lavender in the front and vegetables in the back plus some weird squeaky weeds beside the old tennis court.

Although there was an actual gardener, the doctor's sister Mary, loved to plant out beds of little flowers and vegies.  The time I remember most was when she had carefully planted out some little seedlings so I decided to water them for her.  Unfortunately, I did not know the difference between misting and blasting.  I washed out all the little seedlings in my attempt to be helpful.  Mum wanted to give me a good hiding but  'Aunty' Mary would not let her.  She had a better way of teaching me a lesson that I would always remember.  She gave me a little terracotta pot and a bulb of grape hyacinth that was my own plant and she taught me how to look after it.  I managed to coax it into flowering thus I have always had a soft spot for hyacinths.  I always had a soft spot for 'Aunty Mary' as well, she taught me a lot.

'Aunty' Mary also taught me not to boast.  I had been given a little wooden box inlaid with a colourful flower.  She had one almost exactly the same on her dressing table, so I piped up, "My wooden box is better than yours."  She explained it was extremely rude to say that and I still remember her words to this day.