Monday 20 October 2014

with thanks.....

I finally made the phone call.  For several days I had notes to myself. The scribbles  changing from phone to phone and finally to PHONE The voice on my old Panasonic answering machine was still asking me the same question. Would I open my garden Mother's Day weekend, for the wonderful tour arranged by and benefiting the Victoria Conservatory of Music?



While I have shown our garden before, twice as a happy participant in the Teeny Tiny Garden Tour, benefiting Hospice, and many times casually to the members of the Horticultural Society, the Conservatory tour had always seemed a bit aloof. A bit too proper for the likes of my more casual gardening style.

But, I digress.

I decided to phone, hoping no one would answer and I could just record a message. As young children, my sister and I used to chant 'Chicken! Chicken! Rooster! Rooster!' under circumstances just like this!





I am not a phone person: I like to see the people I'm conversing with, gauging the response by their frown, a wrinkled nose or a grin. Face to face, I know no one is drying the dishes or absently surfing the net. 

But I digress. 

I phoned, she answered, I declined with thanks.

Speaking fromtheothersideofseventy made it easier.  Not easy, but easier.  I love my garden and my friends are always welcome to wander through and pause for a visit.  I will complain that 'just last week the ferns were at their best, just unfurling' or that 'in just a week or two the clematis Sweet Autumn will be fuller, more beautiful'.  But, of course, that's the language of gardeners.  And if there is an empty spot, awaiting  inspiration or a shift of plants, I'll definitely mention it...the difference is, when friends visit, I don't have to fill the brown space right now...I won't have to run to the nursery and buy a full-grown and expensive plant just before our lunch date so the garden will look more perfect.

Declining with thanks, graciously refusing, saying no.

Why is it so difficult? The fear of missing out on something?  The worry of offending someone?  Letting someone down?  Being the good daughter all over again?   Maybe it's just lack of practice!






2 comments:


  1. ... you’ve found your creative niche in spades. Loved your latest on the gardening tour (chickens and all). J.S.

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  2. a friend said it was the fear of disappointing someone that sometimes held her back from saying 'no'

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