The house in the roses gardens...

I cannot tell where I am.... or what paths are these my feet are walking upon

 And who I'm I?

I think I must be Mary Lennox...  and this must be some abandoned secret garden of sorts...

This place it surely looks familiar to me....  have I ever been here before?  I wonder.

Perhaps it was in a dream I'd seen it?  

In a long long, very long time ago dream maybe?

I feel my heart thumping inside my chest and my hands are shaking a little, as if somehow I belong here? 

I want to go inside this garden and say hello to the flowers, but the witch's broom I see parked outside is telling me otherwise...  perhaps I should run away?

I decide to risk it all and take a peek inside anyway... 

You can tell this garden was very much loved by someone once... once upon a time, I'm sure.  For although still lovely, what a pity it is to see it now overgrown and unkempt...

I see weeds growing rampant everywhere and vines have taken trees and shrubs, and even one of the walls on the west side of the house...

There seemed to have been Shasta daisies growing here and there,

And in one or two corners there were beds of Black-eyed Susan's with a lovely Virginia Creeper vine covering the walls behind them...

There had once been a flowerbed of roses on this path... 

Including a climbing red Don Juan, but now they're gone.  Whatever had happened to them?  

The grape vine must had gobbled them up

like everything else...

Loose, swinging curtains...

Still lovely in spite of such neglect...

See all those weeds swallowing up the perennials at its feet?

Oh I so want to cry, but instead I feel anger growing inside me... 

I'm mad mad... but mad at who?  

Is it possible that nobody sees these things? 

I'm sure birds here faint from heartaches...  such a strange and tragic thing indeed.   I hope this little one here ain't the robin who showed Mary Lennox the way to her Secret Garden... but I guess it ain't difficult to die from a heartache after all when all you see here is just weeds and unruly vines...

I cannot bear to show you the flowerbeds where roses and snapdragons in the colors of rainbows used to grow-like jewels on a queen's crown... growing there now is just a sad amalgamation of weeds and some other type of unidentified vegetation I cannot describe.

The herb garden has become quite invasive.  Left for so long to their own devices, the mint and bee balm have chocked out everything around them... 

Plants are not coexisting peacefully in this neighborhood...  

It is a chaos indeed... 

still a lovely chaos? 

In that ungracious corner you see here where a picnic table stands now, there once resided a lovely swing set there...

I used to love this corner... It was a sweet and special place in the garden...

Transformed now...

Nobody's fault I suppose... 

as you can see, things never remains the same... 

including us humans...

I lack sufficient courage to show you the once lovely grapevine covered porch with cozy furnishing; neither the red tip photinia plants; both past dead now however both still standing... I guess I can muster enough audacity to show you what's left of the once lovely white paper birch--the sad lonely bones of a dear garden. 

Oh but we mustn't leave this place through the footpaths of disappointment, must we?  What good would that do us?  We must collect a bouquet of optimism to take with us instead... shall we?  

Thank you for strolling these gardens with me again my friends~