My childhood, a garden of love - Chapter 2

Give me a minute to get us a glass of water with lemon and ice and to find a shady spot in the garden so I can begin to take you on a tour through my garden of life.

Here I am, and here is your glass with little drops of condensation on the sides of the glass. I am ready to take you to my baby flowers bed. 

I was born in a small town in KwaZulu Natal and was a baby in my grandmothers house until I was two. My parents moved to a tiny village where my talented mechanically inclined father was working at a mine repairing big machines. Both my sisters were born there. We lived there until I was school age and then  we moved back to the neighbouring farm of my grandmother.  From then on I grew up on a farm in a very protective and loving environment. My father was my hero and my mother my role model. They were the best parents I could have wished for. My mother opened the workd to me by telling me many stories from the books she had read. She also loved gardening and instilled a love for gardening and plants in me, but mostly her love for Jesus. That love was lived by her and I am forever grateful to her for that. She also insisted that we would study first before we would marry because she saw too many women that had not grown much intellectually by staying in a very restrictive  environment.

We were taught to pray for Christian’s and non Christians and that people were loved by Jesus no matter what colour or creed. 

She invited our workers for a tea break in the kitchen and sing songs and do Bible readings and prayers every day. 

Together with my two beautiful little sisters we had a lovely childhood. We played together in the house and in the garden and sang together and travelled together everywhere. Our farm was not close to the church but the town was not very far away but we had to drive everywhere. 

Our singing repertoire was quite large for small children as we were. She even practiced the “Sound of music songs” with us so we could sing them all.

We spend a lot of time outside and se t for walks together in the forest and down the roads to the neighboring farms. 

I loved my mother and both my sisters and my parents very much. 

It was a lovely and beautiful time. I did not like to go to sleep at night and would always feel sad when I heard my parents listening to the evening radio devotion because the song they played sounded very sad. 

My mothers garden was a piece of art. She spent many hours in it and if you could not find her in the house she would either be in the vegetable garden where she planted about everything vegetable imaginable. Peas, carrots, pumpkin, potatoes, radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, maize, shallots and many different herbs. 

It was a treat to walk with her and to see and taste the tiny vegetables as they grew larger. 

We always had trouble with not enough water as there is a long dry season in South Africa and the sun torches down on every plant. Without water it dies. I often looked at the clouds with her to see if there would be rain coming. I understand farmers do well because it was heart breaking to see how the vegetables would not grow or even die because there was not enough water. 

We also often walked through the orange orchard where there were about 50 Orange trees. They smelled beautiful but I couldn’t eat them because they were very acidic also mostly because of not enough water. 

In our garden we had a gardener who was paralyzed and he would come to work in a donkey and would very cleverly pull himself up and get down from the donkey by himself. He would move around on the ground with his arms and weeded the lawn and the garden beds. His name was Daniel and we loved him. He was a very kind man. We also tried to get on the donkey but it wasn’t a very clean animal and that experience was not very pleasant. 

Our house was not very large. We had two bedrooms and one bathroom in the house and one on the Verandah, one kitchen and a living room with a dining room in one and a small Pantry. 

My dad had an office in the entrance room. My mom would cut her patterns on the extra table dining room table and then see the clothes together in her bedroom. She was a magician with ger machine and made us many beautiful dresses for Christmas and Easter with color coded fabrics. And often she would wear another shade but the same fabric as ours. 

She was just the sweetest and most beautiful and very talented woman I know and she made me the person I am. Together with my father’s kindness and very logical understanding of practical technologies and biblical philosophies they were the best parents I could wish for. He gave me a brain that could figure out things and she gave me the brain that is creative and both taucht me to live and forgive fast. 

I will forever be grateful for my childhood and will also never forget my sweet sisters. 

Our second born sister was abd still is a softhearted, incredibly kind and beautiful girl. She was and still is the best friend I could wish for. We did everything together. We learned to ride bicycles together with two other garden helpers holding on the back of the bicycles  to balance us and then letting go when they thought we had the balance. At first there was a lot of falling, laughing and crying but then we got it and how lovely it was to ride around the circle in front of our house and back up to the vegetable garden and back down again. We also would push the bike over the street to my grandmothers house and after a nice refreshing glass of grenadilka juice or a cup of tea we would ride down the hill with them. What a great feeling it was to fly down the hill and reach our home safely. 

So much lovely fun we had. Later on my dad bought a horse abd we would get o Greg horse and tried riding it. It was not a very lively horse and walking up the road with a saddle that suddenly turn to the side with us hanging on was less exciting. But nevertheless, I loved horses and their beautiful eyes and soft nose abd lips made up for every stupid laziness it had. I wanted to ride and move with it through forests abd girjds but I think it was just plain old and bloated up when the saddle was fastened and I bloated when it was walking. And then we would be hanging on the side of the horse sommer that we hoped to. 

It was a fun time and we laughed very much when these things would happen. We had many tea parties and played doctor avd nurse caring for our little dolls. She was especially in love with her dolls and would change their clothes and played with them much LTS than I did She was also very diligent with cleaning and organizing our room and cupboards. Her at se of responsibility was very high and if I think of her my heart just melts. I cannot thank God enough for a sister like her. We also sang together very often and her lovely voice would easily move from soprano to alto and sounded like a dark flute next to me. 

We did not like our little sister much be a use she was the baby. And she got all the extra attention that we hoped for. She was very good at everything she did, even acting to be sick so she didn’t have to go to school. But that is another story to tell. 

Between me and my three sisters are three years altogether. I was born in September my second sister in the following April and the tye you get in the next year September. We literally were like a triplet. And even though one thinks one is older or younger often people ask who is the oldest be ause we all look very much the same age. 

My youngest sister was always very quiet and had very big brown eyes. She would look at everything in detail and would not say much. My mom was somehow especially attached to her and because she was also very thin and was sick often she was always worried about her. She didn’t worry about me avd. Y suster Karola but Reinhild was her worry. We thought that she was over dramatizing and often wanted to strangle het when she was older. But we didn’t abd she turned out to be a very talented lady that had huge vision and a great amount of energy and many many ideas to change the world. She loves the best quality of everything and also produces work of high quality. If she wants pictures of a place she dies not drive and stand on a good angle, she rents a helicopter to fly over the area and takes pictures from above 

We can talk about plans a d ideas for many hours a d she has taken on many huge projects in her life. Many did not work out te way she hoped for due to a lot of jealousy avd  Ungerechtigkeit but she has also had a lot of great successes. 

My two sisters are like the both pole and the South Pole. From  the same family but o so different. The one gives without expecting anything back the other giving everything abd wabting everything back. It’s like my one sister wanted a simple and loving life abd the other wanted the high life with glitz and glam. 

I am a worker and a dreamer and therefore we are all in one family strung together. 

My childhood was mostly wonderful and we had very little sadness around us. We believed that we were  blessed and we were. Like three beautiful roses in a garden of love. 

Let’s take a sip of the water and you tell me about your childhood.