October 2012
After Joanna's escapade on the Lighthouse she longed again for a little house with a garden. It had always been her love and indeed salvation as a few hours among her flowers and sometimes vegetables gave her a sense of peace.
The new house was quite small and pretty, old, early Victorian. There were only three rooms, two on the ground floor and one bedroom upstairs. This worked out ok as she had ridden herself of most of her furniture and nick-knacks when she moved into the Lighthouse.
It had a black old iron small range for cooking and heat but the kitchen was the dining room and it felt cosy and snug. Jo almost felt the company of the couple preceding her although in a comforting not ghostly way.
The kitchen also possessed a flat clay sink with of all things a pump for the water. The last owners had resided there for sixty years and hadn't found the need to change. That will have to go and a bathroom was essential. Maybe a small room could be added to the back of the cottage and that would hold a washing machine as well. She hoped the old couple would not be upset and indeed start to haunt her.
She engaged the local handyman to have a look and come up with ideas. It was not such an expensive a job as she had anticipated. The water to the pump came from the well but water had been laid on to the cottage years ago but was spurned by the old couple.
It was all getting exciting. Some folk hate the thought of moving house but it really was fun putting your stamp on a home and meant she could indulge herself with new colours and some pretty curtains etc. The whole place needed some re-plastering before she could start decorating, but the old tiled roof was good and strong probably because the tiles were very old, large and heavy.
While this development was going on inside, Joanna started to sort out the garden.
It was fairly wide but thinned off and rambled down to a stream. Everything was very overgrown and Danny, the handyman suggested his son would help with the clearing of the scrub. Jo kept a keen eye on the boy as although he was tough and strong he didn't know his weed from a bloomer.
After it was cleared it was really quite large and they had uncovered some paths and a sort of pond. Jo looked around at the local house gardens to get ideas. She wished to keep it in the century of the cottage and leaving it a little wild with old fashioned garden blooms.
The pond was in the wrong place Jo decided she wanted little corners and arbours wound into the design so that you could wander and find little nooks of quiet with a seat or maybe a statue or two. She wished she had kept that old one that had come from the station at Southend as it reminded her of herself as a younger woman throwing her arms around the neck of her first young man when he returned from the war.
Only he didn't return, the Germans saw to hat but it still made her smile each time she thought about it.
One sunny morning Alistair, Danny's son, made a start filling in the pond. We decided to take the rocks and earth from a large bed at the bottom of the garden. It didn't look as though it had been tended for years. It's amazing how much material it took. Suddenly the spade struck metal; we hoped it wasn't a water pipe or anything to cause trouble. But, intrigued, A1 had to dig on and finally a huge metal trunk was uncovered. It was locked and we became a bit scared about the contents.
It was large enough to hold a body maybe or the takings of a robbery.
We had been working very hard, so we thought we would make a celebration of the new look garden and what we had achieved. So we had a few friends and neighbours around. Glasses were filled in anticipation and the jemmy entered the lock.
The lid sprung open and revealed . . . the required fifty second wait in building up the excitement . . . and there was the bones of a pet bunny rabbit.