I settle back in my chair. By the window, looking out on to The Garden.

The chair I have just bought so I could look out at the garden I have just planted. 

Aching legs, tired arms, calloused hands.

Weary. Content. Exhausted.

Her garden. I mean it’s mine, ours. But I have planted it for her.

Grasses that will sway, Lavender that will seduce. French, naturally.

Hustling Hostas; each one thinking they are the star of the show. 

They do not realise how much they need each other. 

A copper windmill, jewelled with stones of purple and red and blue. Ponderously regal. Disdainfully, it shares the stage with a water feature….a resin hand-pump masquerading as cast iron, surrounded by a family of acrylic white ducks. Yet it might as well be Royalty. To her it is a thing of great beauty. Its diminutive trickle of water elicits sounds of great joy from her. She is non verbal. My daughter.

So I love it too. 

Oh and there are butter yellow Calla Lilies! Still beaming at dusk; positively shouting at dawn.

Like her.

There are spaces yet to be planted. Gaps. Bare patches. Problem areas. This garden is incomplete. I hope it is never finished, for where would the joy be in that? 

We will do things differently. Experiment here and there. Get things wrong. Get things right. It will be hard work, often very lonely, but it will also be rewarding. Not in Gold medals or Silver Gilts, as we are unlikely to ever meet the criteria for those; but none the less, so very rewarding. There is no competition.

And though we still live on a busy road, in a busy town, where noise, traffic and so much more disturbs our peace, where there is so much about our lives we cannot change, though we would like to…. and though passers by and those who pass us by, may have no idea even of our existence; we will be enjoying the garden.

For it is a safe place for her. 

And me.