White HeatherI’m just doing a little bit of weeding, really, you’d hardly call it gardening in this tiny postage stamp of a city street garden. Pulling up dandelions. Cutting back rose suckers. Turning over the earth.

That’s when the heathers pop out at me. Rooted now, growing, and thriving.

And I remember, suddenly, a day last summer when I walked out by Loch Fyne. A hot, sunny summer’s day when I walked out along the valley, got stuck with some cattle, jumped over some fences, got lost by a quarry, scrambled down to the water, put my feet in the river.

Sat by the river and ate my picnic, dangled my feet in the water, and kept my face from the burning sun.

I remember now going back to the cafe later, and stopping first at the garden centre nearby. Looking wistfully at plants that will only grow in the west, and thinking they’re not for me, there’s no point in buying them now. Still feel the need though, the urge, to bring back something from my trip. A little pocket of Loch Fyne.

And so I buy six twists of heather, that sit now, growing and thriving in my city garden, connecting this earth: here, to that space, that earth, that moment in time.

Remember too how forlorn she felt. How sad. How far from being in the right place.

And suddenly it all falls into place. Why I need to go west. How it calls me. And that it doesn’t need to be right here or right there, it just needs to carry that feel: of the soft sweet air, the cold clear water on my warm sunburned feet, the lure of the hills, the ridiculous kiss of the soft highland rain.

It doesn’t need to make sense to you. Just to me.

And at last, when I watch this heather growing, it does, to me.