The Botanics and many Memories

my visit to the Botanics the other day - first one for such a long time - brought a lot of memories.


here's a picture; a blue Himalayan poppy, or two.


on arriving - going through the gates into the intense green, the bird song - i started to relax.
in the late 80s, i was visiting the Botanics regularly, especially with my partner Dave and a South African friend who was (is) a gardener - a Biodynamic gardener, Brian.

He loved the Blue Himalyan poppies, and i think they had only just been put into the Botanics, as they seemed unusual. Brian would often get me down to the Botanics because he wanted to see the herbaceous border, or he wanted to see the Azaeleas which were starting to bloom, and then the Himalayan Blue poppies - so now when i see them I just think of Brian.

Brian went back to South Africa eventually, and very soon after Mandela was released. i remember that because it was so momentous and i was so pleased for Brian as well. Dave, Brian and i used to hang out a lot. Brian & Dave were as different as chalk and cheese and i used to enjoy their winding each other up a lot. One time we headed off to a folk festival up in Angus, where we discovered there was an 'alternative' one in the hills where travelers parked their trucks and musicians played in their improvised stages with improvised sound systems, and people went about dabbing wode on each other - amongst other things.

i missed Brian dreadfully when he left. i knew it was right for him to go, to try and take part in his country's struggles or whatever, but i missed him a lot. He was at the flat with Dave and me that new year's eve my mother phoned to say my father had been taken into hospital.
Brian was always about, bright, cheery, sometimes depressed, quick to laugh, quick witted and comical, an easy arm round the shoulder and a great accent to imitate.




Going along the pathway up by the rockery, seeing the notices 'no picnics, no sunbathing, no dogs' (no dogs?!), on the grassy paths leading into the rockery for some reason brought to mind many visits to the Botanics in the 70s with Z and H and others, it was almost second nature to go down there in our free time. We would often sit in amongst the rockery, sunbathing with some food in those days; it was also reputed to be where Peter Caddy had his 'vision' that let to the start of Findhorn. I have a feeling that the rockery wasnt as formal as it is now. I might be mistaken.

Now i visit so rarely. I remember Z and H and I taking pictures of each other each in front of our favourite trees, in order to send to some healer or other - i dont remember what happened with them, i expect we forgot.

Healers and spiritualists and all that seemed quite normal to us in those days. we believed most things that seemed magical enough; things that were non materialistic, non scientific and non aggressive, in those days.

We still had dreams then, that the world could be changed, that everyone and everything could be healed and all wrongs righted.

we bought most of our clothes from the old clothes shops in Stockbridge - clothes from all decades from Edwardian to '50s, and we invented our own ways of wearing things. We threw away our bras (we didnt burn them!) and shared everything.

There were guardian angels, there were spirit guides, there were beings to help if you only asked. we believed in wholefoods, working in the first (contrary to some people's story) wholefood shop in Scotland, we had a big four ton truck which was painted green with our big yellow wholefood logo on the side. Those weird cranks who had a wholefood shop!

Sometimes we trucked it all the way down to London wholesalers to pick up sacks of wholefoods, sometimes we trucked it all the way up to Forres and Findhorn to deliver them theirs - when they were still a collection of caravans and a low wooden cafe place. we used to play music to truck to on the way; the Eagles, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, others like that.

One time Z and i hired a mini van, grabbed a mattress for the back and a load of ordnance survey maps of the Borders and set off for a couple of weeks looking for land to buy so that we could all move to the country and grow the food we sold.

We decided to call in on all the big estates and ask them if they had any land they wanted to sell. we slept in the van, parked in fields, with the back doors open for our feet and fresh air, and one morning we were woken by a horse licking our feet. We stopped off at a local hotels and grabbed quick washes in their loo wash-hand basins, without being discovered. we played Bob Dylan's Pat Garret album a lot and we sang a lot.

Most people in their huge houses either didnt answer the door or werent very helpful. But there was one place who invited us in to their amazing 'pad' (mansion), terribly well to do and posh they were, and very interested in what we were doing. They gave us tea and cake and told us that it would be unlikely that anyone would sell a small amount of land, that we would be more likely to get lucky if we were to buy much larger amounts of land.

We wouldnt be able to afford that, so it wasnt any use. nice of them, though. and later we ended up somewhere way off the main road, down a track into a glen where a couple of our friends lived, far from anywhere. we went for a skinny dip in the burn.