SHARON OWENS
AUTHOR & ARTIST
Hello and welcome.
I’m an author and artist based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I am inspired by those
unheralded men and women leading quietly heroic lives behind the privet hedges and
half-
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Click here to read THE PHOTOGRAPH, first published in ULSTER TATLER
Click here to read ELLEN MURRAY AND HER CRAZY HATS, first published in SOCIAL AND PERSONAL
Click here to read THE HAMMERED HEART, first published in the SUNDAY EXPRESS
Click here to read THE SUMMERHOUSE, first published in the SUNDAY EXPRESS
Click here to read TWO LETTERS, first published in OMAGH TODAY
Click here to read VALENTINE BLUES, first published in WOMAN’S WAY
With warmest wishes,
Sharon
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A SECRET GARDEN -
Everything they had, they worked hard for it
No trust funds, no easy money there
A farm-
Forking hay in his bare feet
She was a maid of all works
In Belfast
When the woollen mills closed down
He worked in a factory in Coventry
Then tested motorcycles in Rugby
During the war he dug for victory
She ran a boarding house
His wife now
They came home in 1945
Bought a cottage and three fields
Put a red tin roof on the cottage
Flowers at the windows
A yellow kitchen
With a gas cooker
They turned one field into a garden
Vegetables laid out in rows
Potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beans
Onions, chives, beetroot, parsley
Pebble paths and painted stones
Victorian style
Strangest thing about that garden
You couldn’t see it from the house
Across the yard and up a slope
Behind a hedge and a holly tree
A secret garden
Just for them
A red wooden gate, a strip of lawn
Lupins in one corner, rhubarb in another
A bird’s nest with pale blue eggs
Don’t touch it, only look
Butterflies in the summer
And once, a rabbit trespassing
Strawberries in the summer
Bright red dots against green leaves
So sweet, your eyes blinking
Hardly any left for jam
Gooseberries, blackcurrants
Redcurrants, raspberries
Peony roses in the centre beds
Richly pink, I picked a bunch
Pretending I was getting married
Stepping up and down the paths
Traffic distant beyond the hedge
Time standing still
A secret garden just for me
Sitting on an old bus seat
Swinging my legs
Eating peas straight from the pod
Rose and James, my grandparents
How I loved them
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ROSE, 1916 (oil on canvas, 24 x 30 inches)