Heartbreak: the explosion of pink magnolias in our garden made me feel guilty

They - an older couple with grown-up children who lived here, happily, for 20 years - really are hanging around here in spirit all the time, and I wonder how long it will take for them to finally become completely absent, for our own family life and new layers of memories to take hold once and for all.

For the first few weeks after moving in, I found myself imagining them turning up in our absence, and shaking their heads at what we had done with the place. Is this normal? The feeling didn't last long, but I am still acutely aware of being in a space someone else created and nurtured.

Most of it involves gratitude - the house is in beautiful condition, all about light and easy living. There's some puzzlement - why those lights? Why all these sharp edges? And, most of all, there's this strange, underlying sense of guilt, mostly connected to the garden.

It's a beautiful, established garden, of a calibre we never dreamed of and certainly don't deserve. No grass, thank goodness, but thoughtful paving, and layers of shrubs, bushes, hedges and trees. How can we ever do justice to it?

Back in our apartment, the one we bought off the plan 10 years ago, we had nothing but a spindly crepe myrtle when moved in, shoved in the dirt in the corner of the courtyard. It came with the place, and we didn't know what to do with it. So we just left it, and it grew and flourished over the years into an abundant, leafy shade-giver that flowered beautifully in the spring and summer, carried a picturesque bird feeder and turned spectacularly fiery in the autumn.

Over the years, we added Japanese maples and jasmine, none of which needed any attention either. It was sad to leave all that behind, especially the jasmine.

Our new garden is filled with surprises - fruit trees, a pizza oven, stone paths. Dangling Virgina creeper, a slightly concealed raspberry bush, a stone snail. The kids found a bird feeder hidden among the branches of a huge flowering camellia just the other day.

They say you should live somewhere for a full year before deciding what to do with the garden, and as spring approached, I wondered what else we could discover.

A tree flourished outside the living room window when we first arrived in April, turning the room pleasantly green in the mornings as the sun came up, before dropping off for winter. Large buds began appearing throughout August until one day, one of them exploded. Seemingly overnight, the entire tree - a large tree - positively erupted in giant pink magnolias.

Guilt again, but I couldn't quite work out why. Because I hadn't recognised the tree in the first place and the flowers took me by surprise? I should know better. Because they were visible from the street and passersby might be jealous? Who am I kidding? There are magnolias, crepe myrtle, oleander and dogwood trees all over the place in this neighbourhood, and for once, I'm not walking around feeling envious.

READ MORE:

The guilt came mainly, I think, it's because the magnolias were so heartrendingly beautiful, and so fleeting, that I couldn't do them justice. And I couldn't quite capture them in words or pictures - I talked about them endlessly, turned on the video when calling my family, and tried photographing them from all angles, but nothing quite conveyed how they turned the whole living room pink at certain times of day. How fragile they were when picked and placed in a vase.

How poignant it was when, on a breezy day, the path was suddenly strewn with pink and white petals, like spilled cake decorations. In the end, they lasted about a week, all told. The petals on the ground turned brown and crispy, and I had to sweep them up just to assuage the guilt.

We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on The Canberra Times website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. See our moderation policy here.