Remembering a lasting love
Janet Howes, the wife of Winston Howes, died of heart failure seventeen years ago when she was fifty years old. The couple had been married for thirty-three years, and he wanted to find a meaningful and lasting way to honor her. The grieving husband set aside a 6-acre (2.5 hectare) plot on their 112-acre (45 hectare) farm near Wickwar in the English countryside and spent a week planting thousands of oak saplings, leaving a heart-shaped clearing in the middle.
As is shown by the picture, Howes’s heart-shaped tribute to Janet is bordered by a bushy hedge and is accessible only from a path leading to the tip. Until recently, no one else knew that the heart existed, because it was visible only from the air. Hot-air balloonist, Andy Collett, saw the symbol when he flew over Howes’s farm earlier this month. “It was a perfect heart hidden away from view,” Collett told the Daily Telegraph. “You can just imagine the love story.”
Howes, now 70, sometimes goes alone to the secret meadow, which is surrounded by some 6,000 oak trees, to sit and think quietly. He leaves flowers for his wife every spring by planting daffodils that bloom in the middle of the heart, and he has flown over his farm to get the full effect, but he doesn’t have to imagine the love story. He lived it.
This true story is a better romance than any of us writers could invent. I find it wonderful and inspiring that such love exists and flourishes. I don’t know if Janet Howes was physically beautiful, but I can imagine that she was very special, and there is no doubt that she is remembered with love. That, my friends, is a legacy.
I hope their story was as wonderful when Janet was alive, and this is not some visible penance.
I’ll hope for the best.
I hadn’t thought of that, Susan, but I hope he loved her as much as it seems that he did.
I know I am always the suspicious curmudgeon, but, usually, when you start digging into these stories there is either wholesale we were like peas-in-a-pod ism, or a whole lot of “if onlys” shot through the material.
I’m going to keep an optimistic view and hope that, since he intended to keep this secret and not make a show of it, he simply misses the woman he loved.
We’ll go with that.
; )
Thank you, Robin, for sharing this.
Fifty, which used to seem so ancient, is tragically young. And those oaks, when harvested, will be a financial windfall to her grandchildren or great-grandchildren.
Fifty seems younger all the time, doesn’t it? Oaks are strong, beautiful, magnificent trees. They are a lovely metaphor for enduring love.
Simply beautiful…the meadow and the story
Thank you, Stephanie. It touched my heart, too.
I wonder if he likes to fly? It’s kind of hard to see that unless you’re in the air. LOL
Maybe he figures that she can see it from heaven, and he doesn’t need to. He made it for her.
I think it’s love in action, built from a very private grief. If it was to show off his love or a penance, he would have told others. It means something to him and that’s what counts.
I agree, Terry. He didn’t do this for a show of any sort. He loved her.