The Three Gardens

In response to Roland Barthes' "The three gardens" I believe he uses the gardens to symbolize the stages of his life from child to adult. He opens with a description of the house "anything but large...it looked like a toy model" which I interpreted as him reflecting how small one person is in relation to the size of the earth. He then further describes the house "like a castle in a story" which could represent the unique and beautiful traits personalized by each living individual. Barthes then states that the "garden, though continuous, was arranged in three symbolically different spaces (and to cross the boundary of each space was a significant action)," which can be compared to the stages of childhood, puberty/adult, old (as approaching these stages in one's life is significant action). He describes the first garden as "worldy" much like a childs innocent perspective of his surroundings. Barthes includes "taking tiny steps, pausing often" which could reference what he personally did as a child. The next garden lies in front of the house, symbolically domestic, and consists of "narrow paths curving around twin lawns" which I took to mean the twin lawns as parents with the narrow paths being their simple path through their own lives. In this garden grew many flowers which I believe represent either people in Barthes' family or specific memories. The roses as representing the loves of his life, hydrangeas the awkward cousin maybe or a bad memory, kitchen herbs that he has a fond taste for, and "a big magnolia whose white flowers bloomed on a level with the upstairs bedroom" maybe representing the memory of his deceased father watching over them from heaven. There the B. ladies did there knitting, perhaps to occupy themselves while Barthes himself was off living his own life. The last garden, the final years of ones life, has a tiny orchard to represent the few memories one has left of this stage filled [sweet] peaches and [tart, or sour] raspberries. Except for that orchard the garden was undefined (maybe the feeling of unaccomplishment), fallow (land that has undergone plowing and harrowing and has been left unseeded for one or more growing seasons; maybe the lonely feeling one may feel after being abandoned when one turns old), and vegetables that need no tending like when you're old and your children are adults and no longer need their parents in the way they once did and you don't visit often and when you do its just to their house for a few hours. What does this interpretation say about Barthes' attitude on life?