Glad Tidings

I have Glads in my garden again and it is thrilling me and evoking more memories.

Waaay waaay back in 1966, when Kerry and I married, my Dad gave me a bag of gladioli bulbs.

We started out as farm workers and our first job was on a farm near Te Aroha.

It was a fairly new cottage with no garden. Kerry dug me a patch by the front door and I planted the bulbs.

The farming season always started on the 1st of June, Winter in NZ, so my bulbs had been dug up and shifted with us to our next job. I remember our first migration. Our belongings were on an open flat deck truck and we travelled in our little blue Mini. I was 6 months pregnant, Kerry had found our work dog that morning with his neck full of shot gun pellets, so he was laid on a blanket on the back seat and I had the cat in a cardboard box on my lap.

Off we went on our 2hr journey to Patumahoe, near where we live now. An old cottage greeted us and the truck with our worldly goods safe and sound. There was an overgrown garden of weeds about the house. Come September the bulbs were planted, and our son was born.

This happened six times, each June, and the bulbs were carefully packed and taken with us to be planted each September as instructed by Dad so that they would flower for Christmas."90days, it takes, from the time of planting to flowering"Dad told me when he put them in my hands.

Our last farm job ended traumatically, and we ended up living with my parents while our house was built in Manurewa, Kerry got used to town life and work, and our third child our daughter was born.

Finally settled with schooling handy and a new garden to develope, somehow gladioli slipped out of the picture, obviously left behind at our last place as we left in the summer.

I don't know why I didn't buy bulbs to plant again. I was a different gardener then.

But today I am sooo happy to have them in my cottage garden and have sooo many especially fond memories of my Dad and the lovely gardens he developed wherever they lived.

Now I have them again , I will tend them and delight in them year after year. 

That is my glad little story for today.

Glad tidings to you, wherever you are and with whatever makes you glad.

Abundant blessings, Trills.xx