love is…
…a strange emotion at the best of times. Poets have anguished over its difficulties, artists have struggled to capture it, most of us spend a lifetime tangled up in its complexities. Yet sometimes, a simple object can bring a love back from time and space and – for a moment – give us that love again.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, a small Welsh girl wandered into Woolworths and spent her sixpence on her first ever garden spade. It was the start of a lifetime’s love of gardening. Nearly eighty years later, the spade was finally put aside for the last time, its battered face worn away by more than half.
Seeing this pretty stoneware jug this morning reminded me instantly of that gardener and of the dahlias that bloomed across the autumns of my growing up.
The jug was made by Doris & Co, www.dorisandco.co.uk creator of stoneware to be loved and passed on. The spade, as you can see, is still here as well.
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Posted on October 7, 2011, in Family life. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
ape and angel 
I like that post very much. Is the Welsh girl your Mother? I enjoy using items that were my Mother’s such as a tea cup and saucer. It reminds me of her and also a time when I was the one being cared for and loved, rather then the one who now does the caring and remembering her fondly, with love.
Yes – its strange, isn’t it, how objects retain that power to invoke a presence into the here and now: whenever I handle that old spade, I see not the whole person but her hands on the wooden shaft and hear her voice. Lou’s jug just invoked that power as well: in its print there is a tiny spade leaning on the wall behind ‘what remains of us is love‘. So true.