Looking back (deleted)

On my last morning in Oxford I went to look at where I used to live. The house, which was bought by my mother less than two years before she died, still feels like mine even though it has belonged to someone else for the past 20 years. The current owner is getting old and the garden is neglected but still full of primroses. I recognised other familiar  self-seeded plants like fumitory and alkanet flourishing in untended corners. The bush on the left is a bay tree that I started from a sucker and the wrought iron gate we had made to replace an older wooden door.

My sons were not born in the house but both took up residence within 24 hours of their births and spent the next 9 and 6 years living here. The younger one has just started blipping again after a year's pause.