My life, in the beginning ...

I was born! This much is obvious, but for most of my life, up until recently, I thought I was born in England. You see I was adopted at the age of 3-5 months old and so the first few months of my life are a bit of a mystery, at least to me, known only by my birth mother. ( I have tried to find her but have been unsuccessful but that's another story). So, I was born, and then adopted, and raised for my first 8 years in a beautiful Tudor style house in Kent. I loved that house.
What I loved most really was the garden. It was a magical place, and our gardener, Mrs. Coates, ( yes we had a gardener) knew all about every flower, every creature, and special ways to cure wasp stings you got from picking up your conkers without looking first to see if they were otherwise occupied! Conkers are really just chestnuts that you put a hole in and thread them onto a string and hit each other with them. I'm not certain that the original idea was to hit each other with them, but that's what my sister and I did. Yes I had a sister, also adopted, but 3 years earlier than me. My father later told me that he had really wanted a boy (what man doesn't) but my mother wasn't sure she would know what to do with one, so they got me instead!
Anyway, back to the garden! It had a magical Weeping Ash tree whose branches grew like a willow right down to the ground, but they were stiff branches, so when you went inside you were in a whole separate tree world! The branches didn't sway so no one knew you were there! It was truly a beautiful thing! We would play house inside for what seemed like days.
Then there were the hedges all around where the hedgehogs lived, of course, because otherwise where else would they live!
There was a fox that would appear from the back of the garden near the compost pile, the garden shed, and the swing.
At the front of the garden there were pebbly pathways that were surrounded by roses, and after a rain the scent of them was almost overpowering. I would walk around and around the sodden pathways while my galoshes ( rubber boots) squelched and splashed and got me wet.

Our neighbour, Mr. Penny, grew masses of pansies and you could smell them too. He would
let my sister and I come over and pick a posey of pansies! I loved their sunny faces and deep scent. We always felt very special when we got to pick our own flowers and have our own vases of them in our bedrooms. Once my sister collected a bunch of twigs and went about the garden planting them strategically in the soil.  My father watched her carefully then replaced the twigs with bulbs! My sister was delighted when all her twigs grew into beautiful little flowers, and marvelled at her success!
Sweet Tudor stories, and in reflection, when I returned to England at age 13, the house seemed so much smaller than I remember but the memories are so large, and it became the longest place in which I lived from 1967 to 1992! More memories to follow.