Time was when I could walk my wife’s garden paths, stop to admire the flowers, feed the turtles, feed the koi, but especially admire the beauty of each seasonal bloom. Day lilies were my overall favorites, such gorgeous colors, such vibrant varieties. I have a gallery of snapshots from my final year when I could still walk and carry my iPad and even hold it still enough for an instant to take the photo. That I have a decent collection of photos is due more to the perfection of my iPad than any skill I had. Of course, I had almost forgotten my early Spring favorites, the deep pink azaleas, growing throughout my wife’s garden, and then the new variety of pink redbud, with its deeper, richer color.
The thing I remember from our first visit to Berea, probably in the spring of 1967, was the blooming redbuds lining the highway running past the Berea hospital, and growing here and there throughout the community. And the lovely white dogwoods. In the forests surrounding civilization dogwoods are known as weed trees, I was told. They apparently have no practical value in a forest. And then there is the redbud, “flowering Judas,” always a betrayal somewhere close to our lives and loves.
I was looking out my front window again today at the lovely bank of green due to the large old leafy maples in front of our house. The green was lit again by the sunlight but this time I saw what Andrew Marvell May have seen when he made it an image in his seventeenth century garden poem: reducing all, I think he wrote, “to a green thought in a green shade.” If I live long enough and memory serves I will look up his wonderful poem to re-experience the entirety. This time, if I still can, I will memorize the entire passage: “The Garden.”
At 4 in the morning, on the way to the bathroom for the third time, I remembered Marvell’s word: I am fairly certain that it’s “annihilating” all that’s made “to a green thought in a green shade.” Easy enough to check, I suppose.
Incidentally, we think both basking, red-eared turtles ate all the goldfish in their pond and then vanished themselves. The fish, I understand, have been restocked, but not the turtles. That reminds me, we have an ancient box turtle that has lived in the garden for ages. One day he or she will appear somewhere; come back twenty minutes later and he or she is gone again. Amazing, creatures are amazing. The next time we see that turtle, it will be in a totally different area of the garden. Mary just told me that we now have two frogs in the turtle pond.
Eden
The Seraphim with sword of fire
Stands guardian at the glorious gate,
Forbidding us from finding ways
To mare His beauty with our hate.
