My Mother’s Garden

In my Mother’s garden, the daffodils bloom.

In my Mother’s garden, a butterfly zooms through the leaves of the Japanese maple.

In my Mother’s garden, bees buzz from rose to rose spreading their pollen

In my Mother’s garden, a child sits.

In my Mother’s garden, a floppy hat with beautifully painted flowers sits on a chair.

In my Mother’s garden, a fish swims up stream in a dry river bed.

In my Mother’s garden, a woman tends to the life emerging above the ground.

In my Mother’s garden, a woman fends off the things that might damage new blossoms from flowering.

In my Mother’s garden, a woman finds magic beneath the flowers that have passed and sees beauty in the new flowers that are just beginning to make their entrance from the rich soil.

Beneath my Mother’s garden are the roots that are intertwined as one just waiting for their entrance to the stage of life above the ground.  They wait patiently beneath the surface.

In the spring the bulbs get their glory with the blooming of the hyacinths, daffodils, and crocus.  My Mother will carefully bend back the daffodil’s green stems and snip some of the sweet smelling flowers for the house.  She will then anticipate the coming of the lilies and the roses as they gradually begin to take center stage.  As the summer days begin to fade the black-eyed Susan and sedum begin to blanket the landscape.  A sign that fall is not too far behind and my Mother’s garden will be closing for the season.

❖

I spent many a day in my Mother’s garden.  The warm sun shining on us as we talked.  Talked about what?  I don’t really recall but the days of searching for my mother in her garden have passed.

I often dream about the magic of the garden.  I like to think of the beauty of attracting the garden fairies.  That the colors and smells that live in my Mother’s garden attracts them and nurtures that which grows there.  That she considers the placement of each rock, each plant, each bulb, each thing before resting the item in place.  Does she consider the role the fairies have in the garden’s success?  Do the fairies reward her hard work with extra fairy dust that makes the garden seem like a magical place to escape to?

I do find peace in the garden.  I think of the times that I searched for my Mother in her garden.  I think of the times that I spent talking about any number of life’s events within the garden.  I remember her teaching her grandson the garden preparation in the spring including the removal of the sedum that had dried over the long winter.

I remember the life before we would wake and immediately check our electronic devices.  A time when we would smell the sweet smells of what was blooming in the garden.  I miss those days.  Perhaps it’s time to stop succumbing to the devices that seem to have our creative minds trapped and go back out and explore the world that is around us.  Re-introduce ourselves to the fairies that are starved for attention.  It is there that you will find a child and a woman, sitting on the green grass, talking, laughing and tending the life that lives all around us.