A GARDEN IN THE RAIN

She'd ripped the landline cord out of the wall and turned her mobile on silent. Right now all she needed was her garden and the soft rain falling on it. The modern world had got too much for Isabel of late and somehow, by cutting off all lines of communication from the outside world, she found she could achieve a far greater sense of peace within her private and internal one.

Sitting with the farm-style stable door of her kitchen wide open, she pulled up a chair and sat with hot mug of tea in hand and gazed upon the peaceful scene in front of her.

What she called her garden of past, present and future.

One of her earliest memories in life was lying in an old 1930s perambulator in her great aunt's garden in the rain and staring in wonder at the sky. Her mother told her she would often leave her outdoors to get some fresh air while she baked with her sister, making bread in the old fashioned kitchen close by.

Perhaps it was this trace memory of those early years that she now felt a yearning for as she despertaely wanted to avoid all the many work and personal related storms which had been fast approaching her lately. She had a desire to be all curled up in that perambulator once again, blissfully unaware of all adult life, free of the burden of experience.

And that very specific memory was now preserved in a small raised island bed of daisies next to a small, chalky-looking stone wall, just like the one in her aunt's garden on the Applecross penisula in Scotland which they often visited throughout her childhood.

Isabel was proud of her garden. She had told the story of her own life so far in flowers as well as much more blossomy prophecies to come.

For each of the many tales of heartbreak and woe in her still relatively young life she had planted various flowers for each of the men she had broken up with: a blue irises for Dan, cylamens for Tom, periwinkles for Oliver, hyacinth for Vanni and lilies for William.

They all grew on their own island bed at the far end of the garden symbolising a suitable distance between Isabel and her romantic past. It had helped to preserve those failures in flora as she felt it had given her some sense of control over something that in real life she'd had none. Love for her was more a jungle than a garden, one where she was forever hacking away at the undergrowth with a machete, unable to find any clearing for clarity.

An island bed for remembrance was also positioned now far from her ex-loves where some of her friends and family no longer alive were remembered in a array of forget me nots, lavender and white tulips. She had been accused of morbidity by her friends who felt that Isabel had a tendency for melancholia. She argued her defence, claiming it was just a creative approach to making her garden extra special though she knew deep down she had a prediliction for sadness and introspection. One flower in particular held special importance to her, orange gardenia, to remember her late father by held extra significance as they were both his and his hero Frank Sinatra's favourite colour and flower.

In fact, it was a Sinatra song 'A Garden In The Rain' that he had introduced her to that she was playing in this very moment, as the rain continued to pour down on her carefully curated green paradise.

T'was just a garden in the rain
Close to a little leafy lane
A touch of color 'neath skies of gray
The raindrops kissed the flowerbeds
The blossoms raised their leafy heads
A perfumed thank you
They seemed to say

Something about its lyric and tempo captured the perfect dreaminess of a rain soaked garden in May and lifted her spirits after several weeks of unremitting stress and overall gloom.

As for the future section of the garden, there was plenty yet to plant and grow and some she would not even know for sure yet what they would be. Children she hoped for and clearly a husband who would last longer than those other lovers now represented as flowers of sadness and regret.

Closing her eyes she could almost hear the sound of his voice calling the children in for supper after playing outside.

And she could even see that same perambulator handed down to her by her mother for her youngest child just as she once enjoyed, blissfully resting amongst the scented flowers and softest of rain.