Gardens

Maybe we love gardens so much because the first Paradise on earth was a garden and gardens remind us of that Eden from which we have fallen. So we try to re-create a little piece of paradise where we can be at peace again.

Yesterday we went on the county Garden Club tour - $5 bought a ticket (and a map of where the gardens were situated in the county) and a whole day of voyeuristic pleasure: peeping into other peoples' secret gardens; spying on their castles and cottages and talking to other gardeners about their dreams and schemes.

Some of the gardens were situated in the eastern half of the county which is much hotter than here on the coast and those gardens that were situated in river valleys were almost "tropical." It was a hands-on education about micro-climates.

All the gardens were "country gardens" - a few acres of man-made beauty carved out of the surrounding forests - and they were miles apart. We must have driven over a hundred miles getting around and no one had thought to bring a picnic lunch and we ended up having to eat chips and ice-cream which we bought at the only little country store we could find. We also munched on the delicious home-made cookies which some hosts provided.

Some gardens had more weeds than mine. Some were so elegant and well-kept that they looked like parks although even they had some untidy little corners filled with compost heaps and broken mowers just like ours. Being "country gardens" of course meant that just as much space was devoted to vegetable growing as to flowers and quite a few made no distinction and there were mixed beds of veggies and flowers just like ours.

The last two gardens that we visited were owned by two sisters who had combined their yards into one huge six acre "park" along a small river with manicured lawns, ponds, man-made rivulets, fountains, wisteria arbors, several fanciful gazebos and a potting shed that looked like an old-fashioned country schoolhouse complete with a bell-tower which all the kids rang of course.

The two families invited us in for coffee in their huge "garden-room" which had three walls of sliding glass doors and we spent a most enjoyable afternoon learning about how they had spent the past 36 years turning a cow-pasture into an elegant park. So ended another perfect day in this little piece of paradise on earth that we call America.

Now if only we could convince our less enlightened fellow earthlings, the Muslim fanatics, that it's not necessary to live in a hell of anger and hatred here on earth in order to experience heaven after death. If only we could show them that we can enjoy this world and be happy; that it is our choice whether we want to make life on earth more like heaven or more like hell. We can turn this world into a garden or a garbage-dump. It's up to us.

GARDENER
by Ann North

Some of the seeds of hope
Planted tentatively in the fall
Have not come up
They lie stillborn and unrealized
Somewhere in the spring soil
Decaying

The Strongest and best ones
Pushed up though the leaves
And layers of cold, hard resistance
Right into clear blue air
And stand there nakedly green
Breathing

It's alway that way with growing things
Never knowing at the start
Which will make it and which will fail
But the thing to hold fast to
Never to lose faith in
Is simply
Sowing

Chas did take some pics yesterday but he hasn't given them to me yet so here are some other garden pics that I've collected.