31st July 2025
THE BOOK
Bloomer was a labour of love that took far longer to write and reach publication than the year it documents - the year I turned seventy. It had begun with some essays I wrote for The Conversation, pieces fuelled by the realisation that older women were either missing in contemporary fiction or else presented as threadbare stereotypes, and by my own experiences of ageism.
Once started, I went on to explore topics that presented themselves in that year. In the midst of writing I tried to keep my garden in order, and perhaps it was inevitable that in exploring what it means to age, the garden would provide a metaphor for where I found myself at seventy: I may be an old woman, but I am what I think, I am what I plant, I am what I cause to flourish.
THE GARDEN DIARIES
When we moved into our house in 2008, I began to plan the garden. Our renovations had cleared most of the space at the front, and the back consisted of a lawn with a mature plum and peach tree, a few standard roses and shrubs, so for the first time I was able to plant a garden almost from scratch.
I put in fruit trees around the edges, choosing dwarf varieties in some cases, squeezing them into the available space of a not overly large suburban plot. I planted quinces, plums, pears, apples, cumquats, and a pomegranate (which disappointingly has never fruited) and filled the rest of the space with roses, underplanted with medicinal and culinary herbs.
As the garden evolved I kept a record of its progress, noting the names of trees, shrubs, and annuals that had been planted, and whether or not they had flourished in a particular year. But eventually the garden diaries expanded to include much more than practical notes, and the local bird life flew into the pages as I became aware that we shared the garden with them.
When I was writing Bloomer I decided to share extracts from the diaries as a segue between chapters. The diary entries provide a mood lift for readers as they emerge from some of the more difficult topics, and together with some beautiful extracts from Virginia Woolf's novels, they move the reader through the seasons and through the calendar year.
THE GARDEN
Our garden is at its best in spring and early summer. If I were a better gardener, I would have the skill to make it bloom all year round, but then I would not have enough time for my writing. Writing and gardening are both labour intensive, and sometimes I have to choose where to put my energy. My feeling is aways that the garden can cope with my inattention, it can always be redeemed, whereas writing demands complete presence. And whether or not I keep on top of the pruning and the weeds, birds still come to drink and bathe, and the fruit trees continue to offer their bounty.
