qUiEt pLaCeS...

For Renee of "Painted Sky Woman" (see my favorites list)... On the weekend l visited an old friend... tHiS is some of hEr story...

On the day that my newly married husband, my two year old first born and l first moved into our beloved little "Hills Cottage", we knew that we were "HOME"... In fact l knew it from the moment l set eyes on 'her' (Which made my husband rather annoyed at the time as all that 'gushing' also told the 'estate agent' that too! NOT a good spot to be in for for negotiation... But as you are probably well aware of by now... I do tend to wear 'my hEaRt on my sleeve!... In fact l 'sign' all my aRt with a little HeArT... Remind me to tell you the story of how THAT came about later too... It's sooo beautiful)... ANYWAY there we were sitting on the floor awaiting the arrival of our moving van with all our furniture, when the front door inexplicably blew open... Gave us all a start and we jokingly said "Hello" to our new 'invisible' ghostie friend... Little did we know how prophetic that would turn out to be...

It all started with flicking lights... "Just power fluctuations" said my husband and as those 'early days' were prone to regular power outages up in these hills... I went along with this explanation UNTIL l started to notice a 'pattern' to them! ...
I have always been a 'natural night owl' and THEN, bedtime was about midnight, 1am...
...AND so on the 'dot' of midnight it would begin... Flick, flick, flick... pause, flick, flick flick... pause FLIICCK, FLIICCK, FKIICCK! pause, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick!!! ...pause... In the beginning l just got frustrated and went to bed, annoyed that l couldn't finish up the little crafty project that l had inevitably set myself in the peace and quiet of the night... Eventually l got more and more annoyed and shouted to the emptiness "STOP IT! I'm NOT going to bed now! I want another HOUR please!" ...and l know, l know how weird this sounds (In fact l sounded pretty weird to myself at the time! AND my husband!) but on the dot of 1am ... flick, flick, flick... Sheesh! AGAIN! By this time l was getting REALLY annoyed! (As l said l am a night owl!) ...and so l 'made a bargain' (out of frustration!) with my little invisible friend, that l would never go beyond 2am (at the latest!), and then 'she' could have the place ALL to herself... and the 'flicking' stopped...

By this time l had started to get a 'feeling' of 'her' personality and l decided that she must have been someone who had loved this house as much as me and who was someone as stubborn as me too!... And so that's how we began to 'share' our cottage with my invisible friend X:-) ... Eventually my husband suspended his beliefs and decided to do a little research into 'my friend' and we discovered a lovely little lady who had lived for the longest time in our little abode ... We spoke to neighbours and past house owners and eventually discovered her lonely grave in a beautiful local cemetary... Kathleen Flora Stathham or Tash for short, was her name (So my next door neighbours told me) who had passed from this earthy existence on the 4th of July, the very same day that we had moved in ...

We learned that she was a the only daughter of an English couple (where she was born herself) who she cared for until their deaths... She never married, never had children and was very independent (She told a neighbor of ours that she could do aNyThInG a man could!) and she LoVeD her garden... She wasn't too keen on men apparently and was a bit cheeky and l personally suspect she 'caused' a few 'rifts' for the men that tried to share HER cottage over the years... One such man was a single, sax playing policeman who told us that she used to 'annoy' him by flipping the caps around on his shampoo bottles everynight and left a big water mark in the middle of his bedspread whenever she was 'unhappy' with him... There was always a 'tension' in this house when there was a man living here and it was obvious as couples tended to 'break up' here and move on... Things changed for us though as my husband began to tend for her beloved garden and restore the old garden bed boarders he found beneath the earth there. (I think now she has a 'soft spot' for him!)... One of my neighbours became fascinated watching me replant the VERY SAME plants in the VERY SAME garden beds that Tash had years ago... (!!!)

So we named our home "Tash's Treasure" in honor of her love for this place and l believe she still 'visits' us occasionally to stroll around 'our' garden (!!) and so now every 4th of July (or thereabouts) my husband makes up a bunch of Tash's flowers from 'her' garden and we go for a visit to her last resting place... I think she would like that... I know l do X:-)