There were carrots under the hedge

and strawberries down the driveway.

Yesterday I wandered aimlessly around our garden for a bit. I needed a break from making endless phone calls - and answering them.

The Senior Cat was a gardener. As a kitten I remember being upset because, still learning to steer my little tricycle, I accidentally ran over a  plant in the vegetable patch. The Senior Cat did not get cross with me. He managed to rescue the plant and hug my tears away. 

When we moved to the city for a few years he grew more vegetables. My mother grew flowers in the front garden. We ate the vegetables and the money my mother got from selling the flowers to the local florist helped to buy the other things we ate. Teachers did not get paid a lot and the Senior Cat was paying to do his arts degree.

We moved to yet another place. The Senior Cat tried to garden there but eventually gave up. The water supply was simply too salt, the ground too hard. He kept the weeds down and that was about it - apart from dreaming about the garden he would have when we moved on. 

We did move on. He gardened much more than his predecessor but not as much as he wanted to do. We moved again. Ah! The school sheep produced some useful stuff for gardens. We had vegetables again even though he had to garden in between running a very big and very complex school with many problems.

Eventually the Senior Cat was posted back to the city. He knew there would be no more country service. He had done more than his fair share by then. Gardening could now commence in earnest.

My maternal grandmother had died not long before and my parents moved into the house. It was convenient to do this although not the choice they would necessarily have made. The garden had been neglected for years. Neither of my maternal grandparents had been interested.

The Senior Cat set about learning more. He joined an organic gardening group - and eventually became the President of it. He dug and he used the piles of manure that had accumulated from the hens our grandmother had kept. He pruned old trees and removed a dead one (later turned into other things in the workshop). 

He needed more and more space as he planted beans, peas, lettuce, tomatoes,rhubarb, sweetcorn, celery (not too successful), cabbage and more. Where was he going to put the all important potatoes? Ah, that space at the back that was still empty. It was a bit too near the track leading to the railway line to have anything too attractive. 

And then there were the carrots. They could go into that space along the hedge between us and the neighbours. The carrots would surely get enough sun there. And the strawberries? Well you don't waste all that potential gardening space down the driveway at the side of the house do you?

Eventually they moved here. The Senior Cat brought all sorts of gardening items with him. We kittens moved away. The Senior Cat did not need as many vegetables for the family. He grew them for other people - and a huge patch of spinach for the local vet to feed the native animals which could not be returned to the wild.

He was still gardening in pots on trestle tables when he moved to the last residence. Until the last few months of his life he helped to develop the barren garden space there into a garden. He taught the staff and some of the more able residents how to garden in a way that can be managed there.

It was a life growing green things - and people. I am no gardener but I have the bulbs hibernating in their bags in their space in the fridge and I will plant them - for him.