‘NOPO@HEPO’.My Grandfather’s Garden: Innislandia, The imaginary world of my grandfather.

I took the left path where hydrangeas grew and sleepy primroses under woods, edged shady trees. The empty stream ran quietly dry With grass cuttings piling high. If one peeped, one would find tiny creatures To cast a sparkle here and there, a delight. So on tip-toe, with sandels bent Up high I reached to take The plastic fairy as she twirled a pirouette In a theatre made by chance. Reflected in a silver mirror intwinned with ivy branch A mottled foal tends his dreams and Chrismas robin chirps. My brother took the right hand path where the trees grew fruit Ripe berries from the gooseberry bush bulged their prickles. Dangling from hawthorn now a cowboy with a hat Looking for his fellow Indian with the yellow back sack. Sheep gather in a hollow, dark, protected from the sun And Mr toad, now lost of paint, has turned a bit glum. And so we leave our woodland friends and travel up the slope Winding round the rose bed and goldfish where they float. Then up we climb, the middle route, to jump the pruned clipped Hedge. The lawn divided in two halves, a contemporary taste. Now we're nearly at that place where if one was to turn Could see down across the land To the sea and sand. Of all the beauties that I've known Nothing beats this Island home. Love Mary x My grandfather’s retirement bungalow was in Totland Isle of Wight. It was named Innisfail meaning ‘Isle of Ireland’. Behind, the garden led down to magical and delightful to children who came as visitors. My grandfather would prepare this woodland with some suitable surprises. The garden and woodland deserved its own name and in retrospect Is now named ‘Innislandia’ to suggest a separate, mysterious land. Beyond the real world. In the poem A Country Lane on page 8 the latched gate is the back gate to my grandparent’s garden and bungalow in Totland as above.

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Written by

mary-gay-kearns

67 / F / Hertfordshire , UK

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Written by

mary-gay-kearns

67 / F / Hertfordshire , UK

Published

Jun 23, 2018

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Notes: John Garbutt wrote the following piece on the meaning of the name 'Innisfail'.

My belief that the place-name came from Scotland was abandoned
on finding the gaelic origins of the name.
‘Inis’ or ‘Innis' mean ‘island’, while ‘fail’ is the word for
Ireland itself. ‘Innisfail’ means Ireland. But not just
geographically: the Ireland of tradition, customs, legends
and folk music, the Ireland of belonging.
So the explanation why the Irish ‘Innisfail’ was adopted as the name
of a town in Alberta, Canada, and a town in Australia,
can only be that migrants took the name, well over a century ago
to their new homelands, though present-day Canadians
and Australians won’t have that same feeling about it.

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The bungalow was designed by John Westbrook, who was an architect, as a wedding present for his father and Gwen Westbrook.
I do believe he also designed the very large and beautiful gardens.
It is there still on the Alan Bay Road. Love Mary xxxx

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