Flowers from my mother, flowers for my mother

Many of the flowers in my garden come from my mother’s Camps Bay garden. White Pelargonium, electric pink Salvia greggei,  Santolina in the little hedge, tuberous begonia with its interesting leaves, a tough pair of Aspidistra, a pot of Nerine bulbs, some cymbidiums and King Arthur's slipper, tangerine Bulbine, bluebells and snowdrops.

Pelargoniums, the white and salmon from my mother

Bronze fennel, Thai basil

If her orchids were in bloom, any visitor left the house with a Cymbidium flower and a little sprig of fern. If no orchids, then a posy, a nosegay – full of colour, texture and fragrance. Sprigs of herbs and whatever flowers the garden offered as she walked thru it. Her visitors left with eyes and nose lost in a handful of flowers, and a happy smile.

Plumbago, blue sage
jasmine, Plectranthus neochilus

Bulbine from my mother, Alec's Red
Phyllis van Heerden, white Plumbago

In the last few days, I sat in frail care with her, holding her hand as I read. She slept a lot. Once she woke up and said “I suppose we could settle down and read?” I gave her the little lavender book and she showed me the pictures of tussie mussies.

In 2007 my mother came to visit us.
This is how I remember her.
Dressed in purples
Book in hand or knitting blanket squares
with our cat Aragon

Kathleen in 2010
with Spiced Coffee roses from Elephant's Eye

Kathleen Jennie Yeates was born in London on the 21st April 1913. On 2nd September 1918 when she was four her father died  in a surveillance balloon accident in Northern France. Her life changed from being groomed for university to a dame school. Our grandmother took Kathleen and Eileen to live in Cornwall. By reading widely, history and biography, in fluent French, with some Spanish, Latin and Russian, our mother educated herself. In London she met New Zealander Monty Watkins. They married on 15th October 1936 and came to live in South Africa. Kathleen died on the 23rd January 2013 after her one hundredth Christmas. My three sisters and I, with our families, remember a loving lady, gracious to her last thank you.

R.I.P. my mother Kathleen Watkins.

Strange shadow on the mountain last night
An old man with cap, gazing towards the fires in the Cederberg

Psalm 121 I lift my eyes to the quiet hills is my mother’s choice, but in the King James Version! In Camps Bay our house was below Lion’s Head, Table Mountain and the Twelve Apostles and above the chilly Atlantic Ocean. In Porterville we live beneath the Elephant’s Eye. In False Bay we will return to the spine of mountains along the Cape Peninsula, but the warm (with sharks) Indian Ocean. An Irish traditional melody from the 8th Century Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. A Welsh hymn to the tune St Denio Immortal, invisible, God only wise. The last one we sang at my father’s funeral (drawing together his New Zealand family and the next generations now in England and the USA) The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended.

We thank Thee that Thy church, unsleeping,

While earth rolls onward into light,

Through all the world her watch is keeping,

And rests not now by day or night.

As o’er each continent and island

The dawn leads on another day,

The voice of prayer is never silent,

Nor dies the strain of praise away.

- from the hymn by J. Ellerton

 to the tune St. Clement

The pink waterlily I bought with my mother
from a nursery in Hout Bay many years ago

For Northern readers who need sun and summer reminders
My mother loved yellow flowers - only hawk-weed today
Granadilla
Plum and figs

PS My mother and her books Holds upon Happiness.

Gathering the January flowers from my garden for Wildflower Wednesday.

Pictures by Jurg and Diana 

text by Diana Studer

(also on Google Plus)

AKA Diana of  Elephant's Eye

- wildlife gardening in Porterville, 
near Cape Town in South Africa

(If you mouse over brown text, 
it turns shriek pink. 

Those are my links.)