Even though our water lily is about to take over our pond, I could never bring myself to change it for a less monstrous variety because of its precious history.
It was a cutting taken from a water lily in a pond in my Great Aunt Hilda’s garden. But it was no ordinary garden. It surrounded the caravan in which Hilda lived for many years.
My sister and I thought it was the best thing ever to live in a caravan all the year round (oblivious to the trials of having little space, no bathroom and only a chemical loo) and could never understand why, when she got the opportunity, Hilda swapped such an “idyllic“ lifestyle for a council flat!
When she moved, my parents begged a piece of the lily to put in a pond they‘d just made in their own garden. Our lily is a cutting of that cutting.
As for the caravan, it was moved to a site on the Welsh coast near Aberystwyth (see photo above) and we had many happy holidays staying in it before the caravan site owner decided it had become too scruffy and it was banished to the big caravan site in the sky!
Do you have any unusual heirlooms?
