A Garden

I have a terrible sin to confess--I am constantly envious of those around me with private gardens. I physically ache for a garden, to grow vegetables, flowers, succulents.

I want to play in the dirt with my children, I want to make a special home for birds and insects.

I believe that children and those who care for them should spend at least half of the day outside; but this is difficult for a mama of 2 busy boys and a baby girl. Yes, we constantly visit public parks, the seashore, botanical gardens. And it is good in a way that we can't just plop down in our own little patch--it keeps us out and visiting these beautiful jewels of out cities. California has so many wonderful parks of all sizes, so there is really no excuse to remain in doors.

I guess it doesn't help that The Secret Garden, written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, is one of my favorite books. I've read it so many times as a child and as an adult that I think perhaps it informs and contributes to this ache in me, because I think that a garden is more than just a place to barbeque, but represents a place to discover encounter the Divine and friendship and healing. Obviously there is the Garden of Our Origin, Eden, and then there is Carmel.

I get this same heavy feeling in my chest, from my very favorite part of this Burnett's novel is the first paragraph of Chapter 21. I'll finish with it, this pit of salve for my heart:

One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun--which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in some one's eyes.