December 1967.

I guess the garden started by accident,if you could call it that. Now when I care to reminisce,I feel it was more a pre-pubescent tantrum.(On my behalf) Either way,the bouquet of pretty yellow sunflowers that my young boyfriend Raymond had offered me as a peace offering,were now thrown to the ground,stomped on,and certainly not appreciated. He'd been kissing that brunette Anna Currens from down the road!

Grr I was so angry,how dare he think I would forgive him so easily! I'd teach him. Slamming the door in his face I marched inside absolutely furious! Kicking the battered old kitchen chair,I glared at anyone who came within close proximity of me.( While yelling back out to Raymond,I hope she swallows you!") My grandma glared right back at me." Settle down girl, you don't own that lad,he can kiss anyone he wishes to kiss."

My retort was deserving of a quick slap on the rear end. I shall avoid going into graphic details. Yet let's simply say it was far from lady-like, and was very instructional as to what Raymond could now kiss. I stomped back outside to grind those flowers into the ground just a little more! The skies overhead were as gray as my mood.I was so full of hate that day, hate for Raymond, hate for the girl who had let him kiss her, and hate for this unit which was far from the country cottage we previously lived in.

We lived in a rather small complex of motley looking flats (units). Clothes-lines were strung from fence to fence. Dusty soil swirled in the gusty wind, and fence palings were more down than up. Most of the rowdy local children would squat in the so -called front yards to play marbles. I would too most days,yet not today I was far too angry.

There was no back-yard, but we did have a tiny little decrepit courtyard out the front.Sadly it was not at all appealing,but simply a gray,cracked concrete slab,with approximately three inches of grass bordering it.Grass which now had sunflowers deeply trodden within its soil. I often stop to wonder where Raymond found those sunflowers,for as far as the eye could see was merely dirt,dust and more dirt. (So strange that I should think of that these days.)

Sunday saw most residents of the small country town of Bell in outback Australia,sitting in the local church. Families with children in the front rows, single worshipers up the back. Little freckled faces which were usually covered in grime or sticky toffee remains, now looking so angelic. Little Mary Jane shoes swinging

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