We used to work in Peter's garden, not just the lawn..as Peter lost mobility, we did all the gardening including gathering fruit crops...apples, pears, plums, blackberries and raspberries... plus Japanese Quinces.
Initially I had started there as a house cleaner...but Peter said"you would rather be out in the garden, wouldn't you?"!
Another part of the job was just talking..and we learnt much of Peter's history...
His grandfather was from Sixpenny Handley, a village in Dorset..and was orphaned when his father was killed by a runaway cart.
This grandfather went to Kew as a boy apprentice and finished as one of the head gardeners there. Ninety years ago, when Peter was a small boy his grandfather took him to one of the nurseries of a rose grower and breeder and gave him a rose marked "lost label" . What this meant that it hadn't come up to the standard required! It is vigorous and floriferous, but has hardly any perfume.
Everywhere Peter lived, he took a cutting and grew this rose again. In his last garden it had grown to the top of a telegraph pole that held local phone cables! He told me to take cuttings when he became more frail...and here it is.
A further note...I was born in Micheldever in Hampshire, in the end cottage of a row of three thatched cottages.
The railway station is two miles away from the village...and when I was being born, Peter was lodging in the farm by the station....
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