Monday 12 September 2011

September 23rd: Happy Birthday


September 23rd; Today is my daughter Hannah’s 30th birthday, and I’m 12,000 miles away. So sorry I can’t be with you all to celebrate but I thought you might like this:
Recently I caught a few minutes of Gardener’s Question Time on BBC Radio 4. The final question from the audience to the panel of experts was along these lines: “What would you plant now to leave for your grandchildren to enjoy in many years time?” I thought it was an interesting question, and a nice idea too, to leave something for one’s successors to appreciate.
It was a couple of minutes before I remembered that in 1981 I had done exactly that. Liz and I were living in a house in Kildary Road, on the south side of Glasgow. With the help of a two-and-a-half year old Toby, I planted a small sapling in the front garden of our house to mark his sister’s birth.
I wondered if it had grown. Would subsequent owners of the house have removed it to plant something else? What a shame that I can’t find out, short of flying up to Glasgow. And then I remembered that Google’s Streetview might just have a clear shot of the house. And here it is, the house and the birch tree, just like the little girl whose birth it marked: standing tall, straight and proud.
And below is my grainy photo from thirty years ago, showing the newly planted sapling. Well done Hannah, well done Toby. What a nice way to rediscover this and use it to mark that little girls 30th birthday today.
Happy birthday Sweetheart xx




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