The joys of travel – not

It happens every time.  The temptation after a trip overseas. To install some Italian window boxes tumbling with geraniums and nasturtiums. To create a French loggia with a blue ceiling of dripping wisteria.  Whip up a Greek grapevine arbour.

Enthusiasm builds as jet lag subsides. It couldn’t be hard.  Judicious assessments of the backyard are made. In the shower, plans are hatched.

Normally, common sense whispers.  Where are the 15 paid gardeners needed to install and maintain a checkerboard lawn like the ones we gasped at in Chile? Would any of us ever actually lie on a teak daybed, massed in by lush green Balinese-style tropical vegetation? A few hollyhocks by the front door, some forget-me-nots and a rambling rose will not an English cottage garden make.

Why oh why didn’t I listen this time? A week in Japan was my downfall.  Who could resist? Those Zen gardens. Their purity. Their calm.  Their harmony.

A bare concrete slab in front of the sunroom beckoned. The proportions seemed tailor-made. Wouldn’t disturb the rest of the garden.  I sounded out an offspring about a small carpentry job.

With difficulty, gravel of the purest white was sourced and purchased bag by bag at great expense. I lugged a rock or two and took many hours to place them just so. The combined family talents managed to design a wooden rake capable of making the famous patterns.

My finished Zen garden was a huge success – for about a week. I sat on the viewing platform and admired its dazzling whiteness. I raked swirling patterns round the rocks each morning. If I could have chanted “Om om om” it would have fitted the scene perfectly.

How could I have predicted it would need the removal, by hand, on my knees, daily, of every leaf, twig, pine needle, seed pod, petal blown in relentlessly overnight, every night,  to retain that dazzling whiteness?

December 2017