May Newsletter

When we were small and visiting my ouma, we were always told to admire the garden. Look how beautiful and abundant the flowers and insects are, they would say. Appreciate all the hard work your ouma put in, they would praise. She makes her own compost, they would boast. Even though I tried, it still looked like any other garden through my child-eyes. A few more bees perhaps and a few more trees perhaps.

The thing is, I would not have remembered that garden and that tree if it was anything less than wonderful. I remember it and in retrospect, like all things, it was a magnificent garden. And only now, through grown-up-eyescan I appreciate the value of that garden. My ouma sowed and planted and watered that piece of earth not only for herself to enjoy but for the generation to follow and the next and the next. The second next being my offspring. Admittedly, they will be like me and only appreciate such a garden in their later years and that only amplifies the immensity of the legacy that a garden leaves.

We always, always sat outside – I could not remember even one time, not one – even in Winter that we had lunch inside. Could it be that we only went there in Summer and Spring...?

Apart from the admirable garden, a huge tree was, conveniently, right in the centre of their Garden of Eden and we would all squash around the table beneath the umbrella of branches and move in lazy circles to either get a basking of the sun’s rays or a moments relief under the shadow of a foliage. Leaves would fall onto our plates and into our drinks and that would just add to the wonder that was that tree. I can’t help but image how the tree came to be? Was it intentional? Was it a seed? Has it just always been there? I like to think that someone intentionally planted that tree with the foresight of us laughing and growing up underneath it.

It is like Martin Luther King Jr said: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree”

I will be like Martin and like ouma, I will sow and plant and water a tree in a garden. It will not (only) be for myself to enjoy but for my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren to grow up beneath and to grow old underneath.