Gardens of Eden Shores

Just so you know, Babs is poring over her loot from the last week, trying to decide which gem to send us.  While we wait, I want to tell you about my neighbor’s garden.

Karen and Bruce have owned property up here for ages, and used to haul their RV and boat up for summer vacations.  A few years ago they began to build their dream – a log cabin in the woods with Bay access and a sunny spot in front where Karen wanted to make a garden.  When the cabin was finished, they retired here and became part of the Perma-fudge.  They’re nice people.  Bruce is handy, and always helps out when there’s a community project to be done – fixing the steps at the access path, putting in a boardwalk across a mucky spot.  Karen makes friends with the neighbors and works in her garden.  I mean she works in it.  She plants something new every year to see how it will do, reads up on plants that will attract butterflies and repel deer, and waters the whole thing by hand.  Friends give her items of garden decor: a butterfly banner, a metal frog, a stone plaque.  She just has a good time putting it all together – a crazy quilt of friendship and affection and thought and effort – a happy garden.  One day as I was walking by I told her about the workshop at Pine Hill on garden irrigation.  “That’s a good idea,” she said diplomatically, “but I really enjoy being out here and watering the garden.  It gives me time to think.”

It dawned on me that Karen’s garden is a form of meditation.  There she finds the beauty that Mama Nature makes, the riot of new life that pushes up out of the earth each spring, the challenges of the spiders, the deer, the inexplicable wilt.  She finds the humor in the garden frogs – the plaster ones, the metal ones, and the ones that hop away when she brings out the hose.  She finds a connection to something far more powerful than the loveliness of the flowers and the scent of damp earth.  Somewhere there, watering the garden, she finds peace.