In the beginning, the first memory, was of her mother’s garden. It had been sculpted out of a bog, soil piled in ditches with dikes running through and wooden sluice gates with rope pulleys that could be raised or lowered, depending on rainfall and the seasons. There were slatted paths under which the water flowed during the autumn and spring floods, and willow bowers under which tall men ducked as they walked, threaded through with roses that…
