Sometimes on my walks I make it right up to the old church in Glebe with its towers and beautiful arched doorways and the thing I love best of all – the walled garden.
If you stay behind the trees it is possible to shut out the hustling, bustling world across the street. It is possible to block out the sounds of buses, cabs and the hiss of espresso machines.
If the wind is just right a stillness falls, a kind of enchantment that makes it easy to believe in princesses walking through medieval gardens, poets writing of light falling on stone, and children in dresses with bows, keeping the flowers and songbirds a secret.
I’m not the only one who comes to the garden to pretend. I see lots of others. They walk through the gates, faces drawn grey from the streets and stand, touching the trees, feeling the stone warm from the sun. They leave with a smile as the garden weaves its magic.
Such places, unexpected and somewhat undiscovered are a boon, a tonic. Outside the wall it is noisy, inside it is quiet. Outside feet fall heavy, inside they barely touch the earth. Who would have thought such serenity could be found, undisturbed, resting; tucked away behind the stone wall?
