The secret garden…

When I first got my hands on bake-a-boo, we did lots of building work around the fact that we have a garden here. It always excited me, that we had a garden and it would be pretty and would add to the shop. However, being realistic, the more I thought about it, the more it seems like a bit of a nightmare – it’s down the stairs, how would we serve people? I could see pots of tea flying down the stairs etc…..

and so the garden dream kind of ended……

and so the garden just became neglected, and overgrown…….

and the more overgrown it became, the more of a challenge it became and the more I just ignored it. We have a shed in the garden and store some things out there, so very occasionally I do have to go out to the shed to get something, or let our neighbours in to reclaim a ball sometimes, and I find myself batting my way through the jungle of weeds to get out there! What you also have to remember, is I spend most of my days in my basement kitchen, on days when I’m very busy, the only light I see is through a teeny weeny kitchen window, and an occassional trip up to the shop to speak to someone or make a pot of tea. So through my teeny weeny window I see my garden. My little jungle, and as I’m washing up, this just stresses me out even more, as I constantly tell myself ‘I must do something with my garden’

Then one day Leon came to visit. Now I often talk about the other Leon, who is our scone master here at bake-a-boo, and one of my favourite people in the world at the same time….

but this is another lovely Leon. This Leon and I went to Beckford together, I’ve known him since I was 5 and we’re still friends now, sometimes we don’t see eachother for a while, but it’s always nice when we do. So Leon came for coffee one day, and I was probably having one of my rants about how tired I am and how stressed I feel etc, and he just said ‘Zo – you need somewhere to go, where you can just chill out for a few minutes every now and then, and get some fresh air – you have a garden, why are you not using it?’

‘Have you seen the state of my garden?’ I reply. And then he says hes going to come in the week and clear it for me. Part of me thinks, Nah he wont, its just one of those things people say.

But true to his word, two days later, Leon turned up, demanded the back door key and got straight down to hacking his way through the weeds! He spent all day our there! It was a saturday so I was really busy in the kitchen and didn’t get a chance to look at what he was doing once throughout the whole day. At one point he dissapeared for a bit, telling me he had to get something from the car, and he’d be back in 10 minutes, he was actually about an hour, and I didn’t realise until the end of the day, that he had actually gone to the garden centre and bought some plants.

So we had several bags of rubbish, which I later got cleared, but the garden was clear and it looked utterly amazing! What Leon did for me was unforgettable, the garden is now actually a garden and no longer a jungle. Although I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to have customers out there, for now I’m happy that I have somewhere that I can just sit and get some fresh air and sunshine every now and then, and also when I’m washing up and looking out, I can always smile in seeing what a kind thing that someone did for me.

My sister is going to come in an plant some things out there, maybe not so much to make the garden look nice, but so we can grow pretty flowers to have in the shop, fresh from our garden.

I am also going to plant Annie’s seeds next week, in her memory, and I’m glad we have somewhere nice for them to grow now.

Thank you Leon, my gardening angel! x