splendor
Most gardeners, often unknowingly, have an idealized image of what a garden should look like, and aspire to recreate it, adapted, of course, to the actual conditions of their site.
Mine is a summer morning in my grandfather’s garden.
Because this image brightened my earliest memories, I never questioned what went into the creation of a landscape that seemed to flow so naturally together.
For the longest time I thought vineyards came complete with twenty-foot chords and sturdy supports, trees got weighed down with fruit the minute you finished planting them, and arched rose bushes reached twelve feet of densely packed blossoms during their first year.
By the time I was old enough to appreciate it, my grandfather’s garden was already forty years old.
I didn’t realize then that having flowers constantly in bloom, growing one’s medicinal plants and producing fruits and vegetables for an entire family was not something that just happened, but the result of the loving dedication, skill and genuine enjoyment of an accomplished gardener.
His example did not make me a green thumb, one has to earn that through personal effort and experience, but it gave me the knowledge that this abundance, this balance, this almost perfect self-supporting environment can be built: it made the all important difference between believing and knowing that I can have a beautiful garden too.
Both failure and success are humbling to gardeners, failure because it makes us realize everything doesn’t always work out, and success because it makes us realize it isn’t our ability alone that brought it forth.
Pink roses are a symbol of happiness and gratitude. Now, more than a hundred years since my grandfather’s birth, I wish to honor his memory with this photo and thank him for teaching me the art of the possible.
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