Fairweather Friends

Having a beautifully kept hedge pleases me immensely but reality of having to care for it pleases me less. My Mock Orange hedge to the street, now 7 years tall requires ladders and planks to keep it tidy, and as result is constantly unkempt. I often think a better hedge species might have been Orange Pekoe with which I could have started the New Farm Tea Plantation. The act of harvesting by the plantation worker would have keep it constantly coiffed, with the benefit of free tea for life.

Whilst recently trimming this oft unruly hedge, I had a strong recollection of my father who passed away suddenly a year ago. He visits my thoughts daily — different activities being the catalysts for varying scenes from a lifelong reel of memories. Sitting on top of the ladder, my thoughts wandered from how hard and methodically he worked his gardens, the distinct scent of him, to other acts of trimming.

Until his late fifties Dad was clean shaven. He found facial hair very irritating , especially on the faces of his sons, so it came as a shock when at the age of sixty on an extended holiday, he grew a beard. His scraggy white growth became part of who he was and he never shaved it off and indeed, rarely trimmed it.

My father, Ian, was an engineer, and on retirement he took up painting, not to be confused with the other Ian Fairweather, the famous abstract painter from…