In a quiet corner of my garden is a milkwood tree. It was given to me when we first moved to Kommetjie by someone who had kept it in a tin for 10 years. At that stage it was about 6 inches high, poor tree! He said it was a slow grower. That was 36 years ago and today it forms the focal point of my quiet corner where only I go to sit in quiet contemplation. I made a bench from an old railway sleeper and put down some terracotta tiles to cover the sand under the tree and then scattered pine bark over the rest. The shrubs are indigenous in the main and the shade is illuminated by the fantastic and varied blooms of bromeliads, miniature agapanthus and my absolute favourite, clivia miniata.
Rampant ivy hides the vibracrete wall and provides a home for a number of small birds, as well as more spiders than I care to think about. A large hibiscus separates the area from the rest of the garden, providing a safe place for the sunbirds to drink nectar from its flowers and enjoy a bath when I turn the hose skywards for them. What bliss to watch them bathing under a man-made rainbow! They are usually joined by a flock of cheerful white-eyes who feast on the aphids which seem to plague the hibiscus. A fiddlewood, with its ever-changing leaf colours ranging from pale leaf-green to burnt orange, interspersed with plumes of fragrant tiny white flowers, completes the barrier, and somehow keeps out all sound.
It really is a refuge for the soul, a place for solitude.
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