Jana Wood

Mrs Flemming lived 2 doors away from where we brought up our children, in my Nanna and Grandad’s old house. She had lived there all her life. She was a friend of my Nanna’s in the 60’s, and they would frequently exchange plants for each-others gardens. She kindly gave me a few too. Mrs Flemming was a great gardener.

They were the days when everyone had a quarter-acre section with fruit trees, a vegetable patch, and there were no fences.

In this quiet suburban street ducks would frequently waddle up our street from the nearby bird sanctuary. We all knew our neighbours, and our children wandered in and out of each-others houses after school and into the evening hours. It was an idyllic upbringing for my children.

When Mrs Flemming passed away, her beautiful little art-deco home was demolished, along with her rambling, colourful garden, and was replaced by a rather large house that nearly took up her whole section. All her plants and trees, including a huge and beautiful old Ginkgo tree out front, that she would sit under in the summer afternoons, were replaced with modern landscaped gardens.

These paintings are little abstract reminders of a past that can’t be replaced.