Back when I was a perpetual student I used to clean for this lady. I had lots of cleaning jobs actually, but she was someone I remember fondly. I didn’t work for her for long. I think I was filling in for a friend who was on holiday or else my car broke down and put an end to things. I was living in Auckland at the time and this lady lived a long way from my flat. Too far to cycle to (which is what I did when my car broke down, and it broke down a lot). I had a Wolseley 1500 and the electrics kept on catching on fire.

I say I cleaned for this lady but really I cleaned for her family. She lived with her husband and daughter (who was at high school or university). I only ever met the lady. She was probably in her 40s and she had terrible debilitating arthritis that affected her whole body. She used a wheelchair and had all sorts of aids to enable her to cook and sleep and shower. She was relentlessly positive. I’d clean all the places she wanted cleaned and then she’d make us lunch. Boy she made a great lunch. Wonderful sandwiches with wonderful fillings. The two of us sat down and ate together and it was fun. It was the only cleaning job I looked forward to.

One of her great joys was her garden. She lived in a new build in a subdivision with easy access. She only had a courtyard garden. A long wide garden bed that ran the length of the back of her property. Her kitchen and dining room opened onto it. It was paved in front of her garden so she could get out there with her wheelchair. On the days she wasn’t in too much pain she liked to garden. I never saw her doing this but I remember her telling me about it.

This week I’ve been thinking about people who, for all sorts of reasons, want to garden or be in nature but can’t. And maybe the things stopping them are temporary, like an illness, or permanent. Maybe they have a disability of one kind or another or an illness that isn’t going away.

Gardening and enjoying nature should be accessible to everyone who wants it, don’t you agree. Easy to say. Hard to make happen.

And for some reason all of this made me think of Monet and his garden and his waterlily paintings. He started this enormous series when he was in his mid-seventies. His wife and son had died. His eyesight was failing and the First World War had started. He’d stopped painting. He was in an emotional fug.

Monet after his cataract operation in 1923.

I’ve always been obsessed with Monet’s waterlily paintings. If there’s a heaven then I know where it is. It’s the Orangerie in Paris. Two oval shaped rooms with the most perfect white light and 8 monumental murals of waterlilies.

I was lucky to visit Monet’s actual pond (it’s really a damned river) and the actual waterlilies (maybe cousins of the originals in truth) in July 2018.

Monet was a gardener. He was 43 when he bought his house at Giverny in 1883. It was the first time he had money. Over the years he extended the garden by buying the land around him. He damned up a local river and created a pond. He painted over 250 pictures of waterlilies. Capturing the mercurial world of light and water. Then sometime around 1915 he began his huge murals, his Grande Décoration, which became the 8 panels of the Nymphéas hung in 2 specially built oval rooms in the Orangerie in Paris.

Monet in his studio in front of one of his waterlily panels.

Detail from the Nympéas panel in the Orangerie, Room 1, South Wall.

This garden is an upside down world of light and shade and reflection. I walked around the waterlily pond and took photos of the journey. I tried to capture the feeling of the place, which wasn’t easy. It was very crowded. The paths were a conveyer belt of people.

I am getting better. Slowly.

I’m desperate to garden. There are things I can do: plant seeds, pot on seedlings, water seedlings, open boxes of plants. And put up wire for 4 Tecomanthe speciosa vines along the new fence (which I bought in a half-price sale). There are things I can’t: plant potatoes in bags, fill up the raised beds with soil, plant all the new plants (but I have to finish the new garden first, which involves raking and mulching the soil and blocking up holes in the fence to stop the soil escaping). Some to these things I might be able to do with help.

This week has been all about noticing and enjoying the small things.

The birds walking on the tin roof, the bee on the flower, the light on the shiny taupata leaves, two people walking to the beach - towels slung over shoulders, rhubarb leaves the size of umbrellas, the red broad bean flowers, blossoms on my neighbours trees, the colour of the sea between the pohutukawa branches, specks of green in the seed tray, a cup of tea in the garden, unboxing plants, reading through lists of plants on nursery websites, admiring the worms in the compost and the companionship of dogs.

The tree of the week is the kowhai. Here is my neighbour’s one in flower.

See you next Sunday.