They worked all year on the homemade birthday gift.

First they debated – passionately – like all good siblings, about the location. They used terms like moisture profile, average sunshine hours and likely yield…then they gave in and agreed with Simone like they always did.

Together they pegged and string lined a spot beside the fence, slightly downward sloping and under the shade of the large fig tree only for the hottest afternoon sun. Then Troy did most of the digging. I did most of the weeding. Simone was on the phone talking to agronomists about worm castings and the benefits of trailer loads of soil from other plots rather than building up our own base.

Troy and I constructed the sides using old planks, and trial and error. Then the trailers started arriving – we apparently went with that plan. Once the soil was all unloaded we smoothed and made furrows, then placed walkways and stepping stones.

About this time the debate about plantings entered the home straight. Beans, zucchinis and potatoes had three votes – one from each sibling. Tied at two apiece for the remaining three slots were rocket, tomatoes, kale, carrots, cucumbers and spring onions. I don’t have the space for the various pros and cons put forward but suffice it to say what mum would want didn’t come into it. The final decision, where for once my voice for practicality wasn’t drowned out, saw us planning seasonal rotations.

We planted. We watered. We waited. I weeded. We waited. I watered.

When the first green shoots pushed bravely up towards the sun there were hundreds of high fives and that many selfies taken that #savagegarden took on new meaning. We felt like the first people in Australia to ever grow a vegetable!

With six weeks to D-day (or should I say B-day?) things were looking good. We’d settled into a maintenance routine that was mostly fair and were definitely spending more time together than we had in years.

On a random Tuesday Troy and I took a tomato in to mum as a teaser. Imagine getting back into your old garden we said. The smell of that fresh picked sun warmed tomato totally shifted the balance in her hospital room for the better. Suddenly life seemed to be winning again. You could almost see the calendar start to tick over faster. Her chin was raised, the anticipation for home time driven by the need to bury her fingers in the soil, one last time. The garden seemed to respond and had never looked better.

Then Mum passed before her birthday, before she saw the garden. It just didn’t seem right. We are still picking beans and zucchini and meeting in her yard every few days to tend to the gift that never was. The debate about whether to scatter her ashes here now rages. I am firmly pro and would like us to see if we can keep the garden up. Troy and Simone are more practical this time, the house may soon be sold, the new owners may be veggie patch philistines, can we really take this on.

I just know I don’t want things to go back to how they were – where veggies came in plastic trays from the local supermarket and I saw my brother and sister just once or twice a year. That really has been the best gift of all.