As on many Sundays when thinking about the garden I am reminded of my one of my favourite misquotes; namely "Closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth."
It's a misquote because the quote should actually be the 4th verse from a poem by Dorothy Frances Gurney that goes a little something like this:
"The kiss of sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth."
I prefer my misquote because that is how I remember from the stone plaque in my Grannie and Grandad's garden. Until I was about 14 I used to go to church most Sunday mornings (Park Congregationlist) then from there to my Grannies house - now I think about it it was always Granny's house though Granny and Grandad both lived there the enitre time I went there.
So I get to granny's house for Sunday lunch to watch the Sunday morning farming programmes (that's where the other ambition - to be a pig farmer - comes from)with the adverts for herbicides - pre-emergent herbicides I seem to remember - or something like "tumbleweed" - and then there would be something like Department S, the Baron, Jason King or Dangerman.
By then the roast would be ready - roast with roast potatoes, gravy and boiled carrots and cabbage. No TV while you ate. Then watch Grandad play paitence while I would read the "True Detective" or the Sunday papers that were hidden under the cushions of the sofa in the front room. I rarely went in the front room and only went upstairs once in my entire my life. Smell of coal fire, outside toilet too. Where was I... oh yeah the garden - well outside there was a patch of grass - not a lawn by any stretch - at around twelve foot by four feet (doesn't seem right to use metres for a memory) with some shrubs around the edge. I remember a gooseberry bush - I never really liked gooseberries- and a lilac and, buried among the grass was the plaque, with the poem.
And bluebells - there were bluebells in my memory but probably not in reality - more likely a few daffodils. I definitely remember Queenie's wild cats that lived next door - under the shed - there were always a few kittens hanging about.
Anyhow that was Sunday - often one of my aunts or cousins would turn up in the afternoon or my Mam come round to pick us up. If we were lucky I was sent with a pudding bowl to the ice-cream factory at the end of Donnington Street for sixpence worth or a shillings worth of icecream with wafers and then a cold meat tea - why was Sunday evening always cold meat, cold potatoes and a salad (i.e. lettuce leaves, quartered tomatoes, cucumber slices - half boiled eggs - no dressing - though you could add salad cream if you can stand that muck), pork pie if you were lucky, sometimes scotch egg, very occasionally sausage roll and some sliced meat - haslet (love it,) brawn (alright), or tongue - hate sliced tongue (beef tongue rolled in gelatin and then sliced across the roll - I'm shuddering even now). I still prefer meat cold to reheated or refried (which annoys my wife and has only taken 20 years of insistance that I prefer cold meat to get her to leave some cold for me for Sunday tea). Now we have crinkle cut chips too - and mayonaise - for a traditional Sunday tea if there is plenty of roast left over which there rarely is.
Once I turned around 13 or 14 I rejected the church (following the insistence of a Sunday school teacher that you can't be a good person if you don't go to church - it was a congregationalist church after all) and soon rejected god too and have never felt the need to go back (apart from the occasional monkey urge to fit back into a heirachy and have someone take all responsibilty away from me - but more about Desmond Morris and the Naked Ape at another time.) Then a few years later it was me taking Granny or Grandad out - pushing them in a wheel chair to our house or to Cleethorpes.
But sometimes on a Sunday I remember that plaque in the garden - being "closer to God in a garden than anywhere else on earth" - and cold meat teas and I know why I like bluebells and gardens.
For an update on this poem please see two other posts I have made about it. Teh first is the poem in full.
http://frarys-fresh-flowers.blog.co.uk/2009/01/11/the-poem-in-full-5358976/
http://frarys-fresh-flowers.blog.co.uk/2009/02/09/closer-to-god-in-a-garden-rabbits-5540653/
