Enchanted Places ... A Secret Garden

It's a wonderful feeling when you come across something unexpected.
I was being the intrepid explorer - wandering into the unknown.
It was a patch of land behind a churchyard that first aroused my curiosity.
Venturing in, I did not know what I would find - probably trespassing on private property.
There were firs and tree saplings, old dried out grasses and ivy scrambling along the ground.
It was eerily quiet.
I spotted a clearing, and then gasped in surprise, there, right in front of me, was a woodland glade full of snowdrops.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something else.
An old dilapidated building.
In the middle of this wildwood.
Three plastered walls; the roof long fallen in, roof tiles shattered on the floor like a terracotta mosaic;  glassless windows with ivy hanging like curtains.

My imagination went into overdrive; what was the building used for? Who had lived there? Why had it been abandoned?
I went inside to get the feel of the place but it held on to its secrets.  It remains a mystery.

I called out to my husband excitedly - 'Look what I have found'.
I could hear him approaching as he stepped on fallen twigs; the cracking and snapping echoing round this secret place.
We poked around for a while searching for clues - but found nothing.

I had originally been hunting for aconites to photograph, and instead found a snowdrop wood and the romance of a mysterious building, or at least the remains of one.  It made my day (it doesn't take much to make me happy)!

Behind dark, twining ivy
On an old Victorian wall
Where moths and small flies flutter
And spiders weave and crawl
There's a rusty lock that's hidden
In a peeling old oak door
They who find the key are bidden
To unlock a treasure store
For behind those creaky hinges
lies a garden of delights
Only known to special people
Who appreciate such sights.

M. Nash ~ The Secret Garden

Elaine