Friday 16 May 2008

Up the road, afternoon - The garden at Boissy (Thursday)

His garden was a prizewinning, much-visited wonder; when his wife left he laid it waste with glyphosate and went to Tunisia. An absent English couple own it now, I gather.

2 comments:

Bee said...

So sad this --
a tragedy in just a few words.

It reminds me, too, of The Secret Garden -- a garden locked up after the wife's death.

Interesting, the relocation to arid Tunisia. Was it a symbolic statement, do you think? My imagination goes crazy, given this kind of seed of an idea.

Lucy said...

It smacks a little of joining the French Foreign Legion doesn't it! In fact in a way I suppose it was a happy ending, as apparently he found a new girlfriend who lived in Tunisia, I'm not quite sure how.

There was something a little frantic and not quite happy about the way he cultivated the garden, it was just too intense, too over the top,too controlled, as if he was trying to make up for something; I thought that even before I knew about his wife.

After the glyphosate episode, of course the weeds came back with a vengeance, so it's a terrible derelict mess, and the English couple don't seem to be here enough to bring it into order again, though they planted some bulbs and containers for the spring. I'll keep you up to date on any developments!