Of Life and Love
I saw a photograph once; it was of a woman standing in her vegetable garden, amongst giant stalks of celery, seven foot tall tomatoes and cabbages that reached up to her knees. The woman had this expression on her face, I can’t find words to describe it, of a person who is at home, that garden was her home.
One thing you won’t find in gardening books, because it is implied, what green thumb would even think otherwise, is that tending to all things green and leafy is not a hobby, or a profession, it’s a relationship with the land and with the plant realm.
Gardens are living things with long lifespans, which often match, if not exceed, ours. To give you an idea, peonies live to be eighty years, red oaks can make it to four hundred, and a healthy rose bush will last for three and a half decades. I couldn’t find out how long garden phlox lives, but I can tell you mine is forty-five.
Behind the peaceful imagery of an established perennial garden, behind its fragrant veil of stems swaying gently in the breeze, there is a constant, fierce battle for survival and dominance, for shares of light, water and nutrients.
A silent, but very dynamic kingdom.
We are usually oblivious to its epic struggle, which happens at speeds too slow for us to perceive, but sometimes the garden lets us in, like it did the woman in the photograph, it invites us to witness and share in its story, and that is a declaration of love and a rare privilege.
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