Sally

Sally was my next door neighbour.

Our paths would cross at our shared washing line, or in the yard. Our conversations were usually about the garden or the weather.

Now and again we'd sit at her kitchen table with a pot of tea and her homemade shortbread and she'd tell me stories of the village in days gone by. If time allowed, the old photos would come out.

Sally was always pottering in the garden: snipping, deadheading, sweeping, pulling out weeds. She'd hang the weeds on a nearby shrub or on a low tree branch, returning a day or so later to retrieve the dried piece of vegetation which would then be thrown into the kitchen stove.

Today, over a week since her death, I came across one of her drying weeds hanging in a Hebe.

The garden feels strangely empty without her.