Sunday Afternoon At The Movies

One of my favorite films from my childhood... THE SECRET GARDEN.

THE SECRET GARDEN was the first book I ever fell in love with.I would lay in my bed and fantasize that I WAS Mary Lennox.

I even found my own Secret Garden, when I was in 6th grade. A beautiful mansion, abandoned and in ill-repair stood next to our home. It had a courtyard, which I didn't notice at first. It was only visible from the top of our apartment building. After realizing this "secret", I snuck into the property and shimmied through the locked iron gates. There I found a magical garden, debilitated, but beautiful. There was a huge carved fountain the middle. I found an old broom laying in the corner and started to sweep the leaves away. I lifted flower pots and cleaned out the fountain..I was in heaven- my first taste of the pleasures of gardening. All was well with the world until I flipped over a upside-down Terra Cotta planter and an enormous black fuzzy spider(I'm pretty sure it was a black widow) popped out.I am-scrammed it out of there. But it was and always will be my very own Secret Garden...


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Margaret O'Brien is the perfect Mary Lennox.She is my all time favorite child star. The movie incorporated the same style as THE WIZARD OF OZ- the movie is in black and white... until quite into the film, when the children walk into the garden, all primped and perfect- and then the movie magically becomes technicolor- divine...