Childhood is everyone's country

 A particular garden helped shaped my childhood memories and experiences. I thought I had lost those memories and connections forever due to a terrible fire which nearly destroyed my life. Living in that little town in New Zealand was a period of stability, innocence and magic and I hung fiercely to the jumbled images in my mind.

Forget-me-nots in the streets. A red and white fairy mushroom ring in a woodland where I roamed free. Fat goldfish in a series of rectangular ponds lined with alyssum.

Most beautiful of all was the memory of a crystal clear river that swirled its blue waters around limestone rocks and held a natural whirlpool that gently whirled me around.

Rose Street was high on a hill in the little village and lined with beautiful Victorian homes and gracious gardens. Next door to me lived Miss Bibby, a beautiful elderly woman with a black cat. Her house was flanked by a white crunchy gravel circular driveway and I loved to visit. Embedded in my memory is a sunny day when she combed out her long silver hair to dry.

The fire that destroyed my home 32 years ago

At the bottom of my garden was an old Victorian-era rubbish dump and I would find little porcelain dolly legs and other treasures. My father built me a tree house in an apple tree and one day I slipped and fell. I lay on the ground without a scrap of oxygen in my lungs.

I thought the photos were gone but as you can see here I have some visual remnants of my childhood found at the back of a drawer at my nana's place. Years later I visited Waipawa and drove past briefly but didn't see anything that reminded me of that magic and sparkle all those years ago. Recently something amazing happened...I googled 9 Rose Street, Waipawa and was amazed to discover the website of a local sculptor, historian and community-minded person Jan Gosling. She lives in the house next door and her mother lives on the site of my former home.

Jan's research and stories opened up a whole new world and I found out about Miss Bibby and the famous Bibby family including Jan's direct forebear who was a famous New Zealand artist and all-round fabulous woman who was anti corporal punishment and home schooled her children. Jan's life story itself is fascinating and her sculptures made from a white volcanic stone, haunt me with their beauty and connection to the forest and the forces of nature.

Please visit Jan's website - her work is amazing. I guarantee you've never seen anything like her sculptures.
The history of Waipawa is great too and Jan organises a rubber duck race each year along that beautiful river I remembered.

One of the photos below shows me standing in front of a bird bath. Years later Jan's mother found the base of the bird bath after the fire and kept it. The photos of the fire came from Jan's family too and I saw these for the very first time recently not that I will ever forget seeing the flames after my father dragged me to safety that dark and terrible night.

Making those memories real and cementing them with local history has been very important to me. That garden was my spirit place for so long and I truly believe children create and infuse spaces with their spirit and imagining. Children need backyards or places where they can play, imagine, explore and believe like I did.

The next day

My garden 

My grandmother Marje, me and a monstero deliosis

Backyard bliss