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I can hear that pulsing, though it’s faint. I am a gardener in my soul and while my hands have not felt soil this year, the desire is returning. I think, I love gardening so much, that the removal of my own plot and effort was a hurt too deep to touch. Because for three years I planted one and left it. Then for the duration of what became The Longest Spring, I had to surrender it all…house, contents, garden, understanding I may never see or touch any of it again. Miraculously it’s all been restored to me, a fact I still can’t always fathom.

So while my mother’s garden is beautiful and quite close to me, it’s hers. And containers were something I couldn’t bare to transport, because too much other was transient and plants speak of roots. Seemed to add insult to injury. Rather than sink seeds into the soil with water and sunshine this spring, I instead buried my garden dreams. Like bulbs set deeply to wait over winter, my visions of flowers and veggies and growing and permanence went deep down into the dark. To wait. Patiently, because revisiting them hurt too much. I planted them and forgot them.

Last week, on that brightest of late spring days, it was with freedom I returned to my house; bold freedom that dared spying neighbors to peek at me through their half-opened curtains. I stepped from the car and turned my face to the sun and stood there breathing. For the first hour I didn’t even go inside but instead walked through my garden.

The grass and weeds have had their heydey. I grabbed fistfuls and tore them from the well-mulched ground. I smiled at the real victory going on before me…there were sweeps of yellow violas and purple pansies that had re-seeded themselves. My rosemary and sage were gianormous. The little plaque still welcomed a visitor to “my garden”. And best of all, the Iris’s bloomed in my absence, triumphant purple blooms reminding me of Love and Hope and of the progressive work of Time.

In another corner thrives the Ivy I once clipped from an Atlanta hospital and transplanted in every garden since. Nine years later there is a beautiful patch growing. St. Francis still marks the grave of a beloved dog and I could see that the red tulips had risen while we were gone. The grass is knee-deep, there are snakes now that the cats are gone, and bee’s in the trees and shed.

It’s a messy, aged garden. Like me, it’s imperfect. Like me, it will heal. Like me, it will tell a story, persistently and with determination.

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