If you have a library and a garden, you have everything you need.--Cicero
Welcome to Margaret's Word Garden.
It is a rainy Sunday in May. I would love to be outside, digging up the earth, planting seeds and seedlings, trimming, weeding, and adding to the aesthetic appeal of my little corner of the world: my backyard Eden. Instead, I can only look through rain-rippled windowpanes as slow jazz plays in the background. No other music accompanies rain, it seems to me, as well as a little Davis and Coltrane.
This rain is very welcome, especially since this part of the state has endured drought conditions for two years or more. Right now, the grass is a rich, emerald green, and tiny buds on trees are slowly unfurling in paler shades. I see blossoms just beginning to appear on my pear and plum tree, cherry shrubs, honeysuckles, and chokecherries. Some of these trees and shrubs are planted in a circle in my yard. They are still young, but someday they will create a ring of privacy in what I call my "meditation garden"--a personal outdoor sanctuary where I may go to read and write, think or pray, dream or remember.
I remember my mother's gardens. Every year she planted an array of vegetables: peas and beans, carrots and parsnips, tomatoes and peppers, corn and squash, parsley and spinach, broccoli and cauliflower, lettuce and cabbage and zucchini. In addition, she raised melons and strawberries, and her flower beds offered a color palette of tulips, peonies, petunias, pansies, and lilies. I remember her planning and planting her garden at age 85, and that is when I realized that there is probably no act as symbolic of faith and hope as the act of planting a garden. Does anyone plant without hope of harvest or without faith in tomorrow?
Tomorrow promises more rain, so there will be no gardening for me tomorrow either, but that is all right. I have my library--my garden of words--to delight my senses.
Here are two of my favorite books from my library garden:
Very nice start of what's going to be an interesting blog. I'm glad you figured out how to do a blog. I've been wondering about one myself, but I'm far less disciplined a writer than you are, so I will just comment on your words occasionally.
ReplyDeleteEntirely agree about the hopefulness of a garden. But one also has to stick around to tend and eventually to harvest it. And I'm not good at that either. So I've limited myself to making a forest in the shelter belt back of my house. I've put flower seeds at the forest's edge. Wild flowers and butterfly meadow seeds. Some even came up a few days ago, but when I checked on them the following day, they were gone. My mother said, "birds like fresh succulent leaves, too!" Oh, well. Perhaps more will come up. Perhaps the rain will wash them all elsewhere. Somewhere, there will be flowers.
Somewhere there will be flowers . . . sounds like a great title!
ReplyDelete