The garden is a lot smaller than I remembered. I stand along its outskirts, toeing the woodchip path that encircles the area. The air is perfectly still, frozen. Bereft of life, scraggly plants sag over bare dirt. I can see right across to the other side.

It’s strange. This is one of those places you never think about until you’re there, hiding in the far corners of your mind. It all comes back now, brief flashes of memory. Summer camp. Plucking tomatoes from the vine, adventures along winding paths. The buzz of bees surrounding lavender bushes, their striped yellow bodies a shock against purple tips lightly waving in the breeze. The plants dwarfed us, wide leaves stretching above our heads and shading us from the heat. Summer in the garden meant sun-warmed faces, the fresh scent of mint, scattered earth over open hands.

It’s winter now, leaves withered on the vine, errant mushrooms springing up between wooden slats. I walk between dark patches of dirt, gazing upon the clearing. There, where the tomato plants used to be. There, where I saw my first rabbit. I brush my hand across brittle petals, mimicking the motions of countless children before me. I pull myself out of the past and am met with the sight of bare stalks, red berries on blackened stems. I see the furred touch of frost on leaves, the icy tread of winter felling the plants before it. Wooden trellises jut out, sharp silhouettes against the low grey sky. If I pushed hard enough, I could topple one.

The realm of memory is a peculiar one; I stand here, observing this garden at the end of the road and am brought back to this exact place in another time, so impossible to get to that it might as well be of a different world. Perhaps it only exists in my mind: perhaps we never furtively picked more raspberries than was permitted, perhaps the plants didn’t loom as they do in my mind. But what difference does it make, in the end? Regardless, I stand here and feel the past overlapping the present, am transported to a memory tucked away from my usual thoughts.

It’s winter now, but I know that come summer the bleak beauty of the garden will melt into blossoming vines and fragrant flowers, and once again children will return. But that is for another time, a different place. The cold digs under my coat, and I take one last look at this garden with its shades of grey. I may never think of it again, as I’m pulled into the tumultuous currents of everyday life, but no matter how buried, how hidden, this place will still exist, hidden deep in the dark recesses of my mind. As I leave, the first raindrops slide down my back.