The caveman in me

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

- Oscar Wilde -

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I love nature and gardening and for those who read my posts regularly you're probably getting sick of me saying it...or my posts in general, I suppose. I do though, despite people (here on Hive and in my real life) not expecting it from someone like me...whatever, "someone like me," means.

I feel, engaged and energised when I'm with nature, in myself and with the planet around me, it feels like I'm exactly where I was made to be...maybe that's the caveman in me. That's right, caveman. I'd be happy to be transported back ten thousand years and live in a cave; I'm not even joking. Alas, I live in a house, in modern society. Fortunately though, I live in a location that gives plenty of opportunity to get amongst natural places and I take full advantage.

Today, I'm going to another open garden, this one closer to the city. I'll have some photos from today (hopefully) and I may share them in the future, but for now I wanted to share a few from an open garden I went to a couple weeks ago, as I said I would. You can see the first post here.

This garden is privately owned and sits amongst rolling hills over one hundred kilometres from the capital city of the State of South Australia; It's a beautiful drive and well worth the effort. The owner is descended from people who came to the area in 1845 and settled as farmers and it was in the 1800's that the first bulbs were planted: Sparaxis, Oxalis, Starfish Iris and Peruvian Scillas.

The current owner is the daughter of the woman who began to develop the garden more avidly and with purpose back in the 1950's. The mother had had a terrible accident and was potentially going to be left paraplegic; during her convalescence her father bought her twenty King Alfred daffodils which she planted and which multiplied of course. There are now many thousands and fifty different types of daffodils plus thousands of other flowers besides.

Time passed, as did the responsibility for the property and garden, and the daughter took over; the current owner. She's getting on in age herself now and struggling to do all the work required to maintain the garden and due to its relative remoteness (there's nothing close by) volunteers to assist are few and sporadic. This means the private garden, usually open to the public on one weekend a year, will never open again; the day I was there a couple weeks ago was the last time.

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I found, wandering around the other day, that I felt a little sad the garden is beyond the scope of the current owner to handle and that it'll probably fall into disarray in the years to come. The bulbs will keep popping up each year though, for many years to come, and that made me happy to know.

I know someone who would have loved to have been there with me there, she would have moved heaven and earth to be there if it was a real possibility but it wasn't to be so this post shows the few photos I wanted to add to that already shown in the previous post as linked above and it'll have to suffice; it's not as good as being there in person, but it's something at least.

It's the caveman in me that loves places like this, natural places and away from people...it's where I feel home, comfortable and energised simultaneously.

What are your experiences with nature and how does it make you feel? I know people who feel deep affinity with it, like myself, and others who prefer the concrete jungle that modern cities can be...which are you? Feel free to share your thoughts, stories of natural places you've been and share a photo if you'd like to. Comment below if you'd like to.