A Coincidence of Kelpies and the Return of my Garden Shadow.

How the odd serendipity of two Kelpie encounters in two gardens, on opposite sides of the world, feels like the universe and I are back on speaking terms.

Ella standubg alert at the entrance to the glasshouse, looking out over a wintry garden.

It felt like the universe had gone quiet on me lately. Well, about two years ago, really. We had always been in touch, since I was a little girl, we seemed in tune to one another, and it seemed, not always, but most of my life, like I had a direct line. I would put things out there, and the universe would answer back in a myriad of ways. I tried to live bravely. I tried to always follow my own path. I tried to always heed the call when instinctively I felt like there was something I was meant to be doing. This is what it seemed to me the universe wanted.

The end of Little Oak and the beginning of Moorfield had been led by this, a series of odd coincidences and the discovery of a path, and it seemed right, all aligned exactly when we needed them to; it was uncanny and constant. It was reassuring. It stayed like this for a year, and then things began to unravel, life things, things got hard, and we’ve done lots of hard, but this time was up there and then some.

People we loved, pets we loved, left us suddenly and in rapid succession, and then there were a few extra hits from left field, and our wobble became a knockout, and we were down and struggling to get up. It felt like we were spiralling, and the garden was my refuge, and then amidst the chaos of it all, the garden overwhelmed me too. For two years, I have been listening, looking, waiting to feel some kind of connection again, but what it is, I don’t know. I’ve never known what to call it, this sense I am being guided, if you will, but it seemed to have just up and disappeared.

I felt like I needed to start being brave again. Like I had retreated long enough to lick my wounds. I began to crawl out of the corner I had been cowering in, shell-shocked from the last two years, having reopened old wounds from the other 40-odd. I made lots of little choices and a few grand, sweeping gestures; it all felt like the winds were about to change, and then, nothing. I felt moments, I felt flickers, but they seemed to amount to not much more.

I couldn’t feel a great swell of the rising tide coming up to meet me, a flood of momentum, like it had in the past, rather the energy of those moments lasted only in skerricks as daily life poured back through the front door as soon as we landed at home but I gripped them tight, and I did the only thing I could do with them, I turned them into doing. It seemed the only thing left to do was start taking lots of small steps forward in the direction I wanted to go and accept there was no great shift afoot, no great gesture from the universe to assure me I was still on the right path.

I was seated on one of the two old cane chairs we have inside the glasshouse, a trug on my lap filled with seed packets, sorting them out to either side of me. Veg to my right and flowers to my left, when I heard scratching. I looked over to see my new dog, Ella, a black and tan Purebred Kelpie, making a bed of dry earth beneath my propagation table. She had decided to spend her morning with me down here; she had decided to go everywhere I went, but she seemed particularly pleased when that was out to the garden.

I kept forgetting that Ella was in our lives, or even in the garden with me, so unexpected was her arrival, so freakish was the timing, and so long I had known the absence of her predecessor, my former garden shadow, Wednesday. I would hear Ella’s tags clinking when she ran, which was everywhere, and it would surprise me when she appeared around the edge of a garden bed. It would surprise me it was not Wednesday at first.

Ella yelps low and constant like she is conversing, and I would find myself talking back as I went about my tasks, weeding, planting, sowing, digging, until we chatted like old friends for hours. She would place her face against the tips of my fingers, my hand hung down by my side, still and lost in thought as I was amongst the spent growth of winter. I would pat her as she so prompted me to, and I found myself attempting most things single-handedly to keep the other free for the reassurance that she needed, that she was welcome at my side, and this was home. Or perhaps it wasn’t for her. Perhaps it was for me, because she sensed I needed it even before I had.

And I felt something returning. I thought to catch the universe whispering in my ear again. Don’t you see? It said.

So long I had looked for Wednesday, in the garden after she died, only to remember each time that she was gone. The wind knocked out of me in the beginning, then it was a dull, despondent throb, until one day I must have stopped looking. I don’t remember when that was exactly, but what remained was no visceral response but rather an emptiness that I’d forgotten to name, until it became completely indistinguishable from all the other stress and loss I was lugging about. It was just there and I didn’t question it, like an ache in a joint, and on bad days, like the death of a dream. Something had left me, the motivation, the love, the vision, a dog, and maybe that was the tipping point of it all.

I thought it was the garden itself, at first, the sense of emptiness. Too big and overwhelming it had become, perhaps that I was subconsciously tuning out from it, the last couple of years that had thrown us hit after hit and exhausted us on every level. I worked it, I put so much into it, but something wasn’t quite right. I thought it was my fault; I had taken on too much, too soon after the last mountain we just managed to summit, a mountain called Little Oak. No sooner had we come to the end of that mammoth journey did I began the next, only this mountain was bigger and without any real break between.

It never once occurred to me that it might be the absence of a dog at my side. I’d never really stopped to realise that I’d not done this, done what I did at Little Oak, done what I was doing at Moorfield, without one.

Wednesday at Moorfield.

So many things had gone awry in those three short years we left Little Oak behind in Tassie, moved to Central Victoria, and found the beautiful Moorfield, waiting on Dja Dja Wurrung country for someone to give her back a family and her garden. Don’t get me wrong, plenty had gone right in those three years, too. After all, Moorfield was my dream home, an original homestead in the landscape of goldfields country that I loved, an hour north of Melbourne, a city that I adored, in a state known for its incredible gardens, and we found her entirely by accident.

There had been serendipity in that moment; it had felt fated. If we’d taken the other road, the one we were meant to and not the one I had a “feeling” to follow, we’d have missed her, Moorfield and her large FOR SALE sign, by only 50 meters, hidden around a hairpin turn, and right when her price had fallen into our budget. We’ve met so many great people in our community, in the gardening community. Nes loves it here. The world was filled with possibility (and it still is), but the challenging stuff and the downright sideswiping stuff began to gather pace, and on the balance of things, we’d started to shift off our axis and wobble. It was death, so much of it, it was money, it was work, ill health, family, injury, over and over and over again, all of it, and in quick succession. We needed a circuit breaker.

We had a wonderful family holiday to end last year; it had done a good job of resetting us, and we were excited for the future. I was headed to Great Dixter in the countryside of England, and several other gardens too, shortly thereafter. It was a long-held dream, and it was going to happen. And then, right before I left, another blow, a big one, and we were thrown into chaos once more, and I became rather stressed about going, but it was all paid for, all non-refundable, and so I was on that plane no matter what.

I was sitting at the large, heavy timber table at Great Dixter in late spring, mid-lesson with Fergus Garrett, when he took a phone call. He then looked up at me, smiling widely, and asked me to go with him into the garden. Just me. He had asked his wife to bring their dog to meet me; it was an Australian Kelpie, and being Australian, Fergus thought I would like to see a little of home. I suspect this is because he knew I lived in the countryside in Australia on a former sheep station, where Kelpies were common on most farms, and that we had briefly discussed losing my dog, who had Kelpie in her too, rounding you up if you ever attempted to run, whip-smart and could clear an eight and a half feet fence from sitting. She had been my constant in the garden for over 12 years.

I met Fergus’ vivacious young black and tan Kelpie (they come in a number of different colours), hyper-alert as they are and full of energy, it seemed like a brief moment where two worlds collided. A Kelpie was the last thing I had expected to see at Great Dixter, and being taken to meet one by Fergus Garrett himself, even less so. It was a personal moment and just one of the many occasions Fergus demonstrated his generosity as a human, not just a hero-like figure in the horticultural world. A simple, unexpected gesture that gave my brain some much-needed reprieve as jetlagged as I was, and stressed about leaving Hugo in the middle of a shitstorm, which only made missing him and my little girl so much worse.

He’d wanted me to go, Hugo, he wouldn’t let me miss out on this opportunity, but his world was imploding through no fault of his own, and it had left us very vulnerable and for two people who grew up skirting the poverty line, having worked so hard to change that course, to give Nes a different start, it was incredibly distressing. Add to this the fact that we’d never been apart more than a few nights as a family and only once before, and it would be almost two weeks before I would see him, or Nes, again. I was sick with worry, sleep deprived, and all the while trying to be present in the incredible experience that was being at Great Dixter and being taught by Fergus Garrett.

I told Fergus at the time of meeting his Kelpie, that we had talked about being ready for a new dog; it had been long enough, and our little girl would love one, we would love one, that special companionship dogs offer a person, a child, a family. I had told Fergus I had just been anxious with Hugo away in the city all week on long days, with me practically solo parenting, to add training a pup to it. Dogs at Moorfield meant teaching them their boundaries, the road out front, the fences, and about the livestock on the other side of them; Alpacas that would take no rubbish from a dog, and the sheep and their lambs that the Alpacas were protecting against wild dogs and foxes. The time to train the dog when it came to snakes, given we had two of the world’s most venomous, where we live, and had seen them from time to time in the summer and autumn.

It was a lot to consider, I told him, I had to have the time to do it properly. I sat back down in class, and thought to myself, how sweet a thing it was to do, how kind and comforting, and I left it at that and got on with my week, learning in one of the greatest gardens in the world, from one of the greatest gardeners in the world, only now having met his Kelpie (and his lovely wife).

After a couple of weeks in the UK and Europe, where Hugo and Nes joined Mum and I, having enjoyed leaving life behind for a little while and soaking up the approaching summer sun, beautiful places and food, long lunches, and marveling at all number of ancient things trying not to think about the exchange rate, we returned home and attempted to settle back into life at Moorfield. I felt different being back; it was the flicker, a surge of energy, come back having left entirely exhausted. It was being at Great Dixter that had done it, as I had hoped it would, and I clung onto the feeling white-knuckled as life forced its way in on my renewed focus. I was wading around in deep gratitude on my return, and it was there I wanted to stay, and from there, where I wanted to begin to build the garden again.

We had our little one’s 6th birthday to think about in July, she wanted a big party with all her friends and a real axolotl of all things. She had talked about it for a year. We managed to convince her to wait until Christmas for any potential axolotl pets when it was warmer, and she relented but quickly turned to wanting a dog, something we had been discussing more and more, as I had mentioned to Fergus. For two years, I couldn’t think about getting another dog since we buried Wednesday under the young Mount Fuji Cherry Blossom she had watched us plant the day before she died unexpectedly.

The Mount Fuji Cherry Blossom was the tree she and her brother, Pugsley, used to play and nap under back at Little Oak when they were puppies. It had seemed fitting and somewhat haunting, like she had known she would rest there, and that’s why she sat watching the three of us planting it. We placed the ashes of mum’s cat Missy who had passed recently at the time after almost twenty years with her, around the base of it and belongings from Pugsley that we had brought with us from Tassie where he had died from cancer at 4 and was buried in the garden at Little Oak, under a magnolia.

Wednesday rests at the base of the young Mt Fuji Cherry Blossom she watched us planting the day before she died.

Now all three of them were at rest there beneath this one tree at Moorfield, these companions of ours, and it felt like the end of some very long and very pivotal chapter in our lives, which they had been a part of. After that, we lost Hugo’s father, had endless illness and injury, and then lost more people we loved from our lives. It felt as if our story had become suspended in some kind of chaotic state, and we had begun to feel stuck there. Adding a dog to that would only make matters worse, we said, it’s not the right time, we said.

When we returned, a crack had formed in the chaos, and light began to seep in, it seemed not a lot but a little, and I wanted to just be grateful for that. We could see it, we could feel it, and suddenly, we began to talk about getting a dog again. We even began to check the shelters online for a suitable pup to bring home. I wanted to bring them all home. I had told Hugo about Fergus’s Kelpie. I said a Kelpie would be good, but we couldn’t afford one, and to go to a breeder wouldn’t feel right, with so many dogs without homes.

I would go it alone with the new pup while Hugo was in town all week, training it not to get into livestock, onto roads, or head to head with a Tiger or Eastern Brown (both snakes). I’d take the hit for Nes, for her birthday, and besides, I had a lot more to learn about caring for axolotls before we took that plunge. We had only a couple of weeks to choose which dog we would surprise her with, and we were feeling the pressure to make the right decision.

We were days off needing to just bite the bullet, pick a dog, and hope for the best, when one evening, just before bedtime, Nes, standing in the living room, suddenly said, “There’s a dog at the door!” We all got up, peered around the corner, and were all shocked to see a black and tan Kelpie, immediately reminding me of the young Kelpie I’d met at Great Dixter, sitting on our doormat staring in from the dark.

In the coming week, her story unfolded; it was a sad one. Ella was 6 years old. She was a purebred Kelpie, removed from a breeder as a pup after welfare was brought into question, we were told. She found a new home not far from us with sheep and goats until recently, when her owners could no longer care for her. We fed her, and we attempted to contact her owners every way we could once she had let us close enough to read her tag. She left us, she came back, and this happened over and over in various scenarios until we were asked if we would consider taking her, by her people.

Ella was fascinated with Nes and was endlessly trying to be close to her. Although skittish, she soon began to relax, becoming a cuddles and pats machine, the complete opposite of the terrified pup who sat on our doormat for hours and hours refusing to be pet or come inside, growling at kangaroos that ventured too close to the house. Already guarding the home she wouldn't enter, belonging to the family that wasn’t hers.

Ella attentively watches everything Nessie does.

We enticed her in after the first 48 hours, many of which were spent sitting in the freezing cold, near enough to her that she felt we were with her, but far enough away that she wouldn’t take off. Sausages (all out of dog food as we were) and a bed made of old linen, just inside the door, did the trick. She’d been a farm dog, not a house dog, and the feel of floorboards scared her; she stumbled gingerly along them to the living room in time. She had begun to eat well, and soon she slept soundly in the corner of the couch by the fire that had been Wednesday’s.

How could we refuse this seemingly serendipitous meeting, where we found each other when we needed each other, our new dog literally showing up on our doorstep, ticking every box? She was Wednesday, but younger, faster, less obedient, but just as smart and capable of being taught. Within a week, she was responding to new commands and settling into our routine. She barely disrupted our lives, except for a few attempts to visit the sheep on her old farm, sending us into cardiac failure on our country road, where people drive at 130 km/h, before returning home. Each time, the adventure away from Moorfield got shorter and shorter. And then they stopped, and she stayed.

I was most surprised by how easily she joined my side in the garden, staying close by as Wednesday had always done, sleeping at my feet in the sun. She didn’t stay to the paths like Wednesday but we could work on that (my new sown garlic cloves are well-compressed let’s say) and she liked to practically stand on top of me looking for pats while I attempted to dig or plant or weed, it would be annoying if it weren’t so amusing.

She wanted to play, she wanted to round me up, she wanted to round everyone up, even our cars (we would work on that too), but she paid the alpacas and sheep no mind, and she never stalked the fence between. She was suitably cautious sniffing under logs and piles, she knew from all her previous summers what might lurk beneath. She began to come when called, and wait when told, her head tilting from side to side as she figured out what we were asking of her.

Ella, the Kelpie and my new garden shadow.

And I felt something come back to me in the garden, companionship and with it, the sense of possibility. The garden is a huge task, as much as it is also my refuge. It is a labour of love, but it can be lonely. I do most of it on my own, Hugo and Mum help when they’re able, but that’s not often. I am good alone, I am an only child born to busy parents (though to a cul-de-sac of kids, too thankfully, in the freewheelin’ 80s in a remote town). Yet the work itself, the size of it, when alone, can feel daunting at times, even if, like us, you have done it before and know it will come together. And while Ella can’t pick up a shovel, can’t weed, can’t sow carrots, though I wonder sometimes, given how smart Kelpies are, she is the company I didn’t realise I was missing so much, the company I hadn’t stopped to realise I had never gardened without.

Wednesday and Pugsley in the Little Oak days.

Wednesday and Pugsley came to us at the beginning of Little Oak, before there was a garden. They were there at my side for the very first bed I made, both at my side, both digging and pulling up roses, burying bones, sleeping along the paths as they were made amongst the spilling flowers of summer, chasing bees and dragonflies, barking at wallabies in the paddock. And then just Wednesday, never far from where I worked, missing her brother, as I put down the heavy things I had always carried, burying them in the garden, my own bones, my own trappings, she was there. Dogs were my garden companions for the entire 10 years it took to build the garden that has gone on to become a place where people celebrate love and family, and times of being together. Where Pugsley sleeps forever under the Magnolia, a tree given to me by my first nursery boss, the day he died, to plant where he loved to sit.

I walk Ella to the young Mt Fuji Cherry Blossom, and the tractor claws that made a W that sit there, marking the spot, were pulled from the dirt as we dug Wednesday’s grave. I tell Ella who Wednesday was, who Pugsley was, and who Missy was; she seems to listen. She smells the earth at its trunk, does she know them by scent? Ella’s old family told us they had met Wednesday a few times, unbeknownst to us, she had gone to visit Ella on her farm across the way. We hadn’t even been there. I begin to wonder if that’s why Ella chose this farm, out of all the others she could have picked, when the upheaval in her family’s life left her feeling alone and lost…because of Wednesday.

The W we dug out of the ground where we’d chosen to put Wednesday’s grave beside the Mt Fuji Cherry Blossom.

Hugo’s world pivoted, and in the best way, a way we would not have seen without the hard lesson we had just had to learn. Loss of loved ones brought new clarity and a better sense of how we want to live our lives, and the motivation to make it happen. Other things, hard things, had begun to level out, and we found our rhythm finally with things that had been out of step for a long time. And so it would seem the universe and I are speaking again, or maybe we never stopped, and it was working in the background the whole time. It knew what we needed, including a dog, who came exactly when we asked for her, with all the qualities we needed her to have, and a fortnight in, it feels like she has always been a part of this family, and has become the shadow at my side, in the garden, I didn’t know I couldn’t do it without.

Thank you for being here, Pip xo

Ella, climbing on Hugo’s back in lieu of sheep.

---

Recently published pieces you might like to read…

---

Every like, comment, share, and restack makes a huge difference to the success of my writing here on Substack and beyond, so I appreciate all of them very much and also the opportunity to get to engage with some of you and hear your thoughts, stories, and advice. Thank you again for choosing to be here; it means so much to me and my family.

---