Through the Garden Gate ... Keeping a Date With Beauty

Sci-buffs know the importance of ‘portals’ to their genre. The image of doors or gates to the past and future got its first real boost with H. G. Welles classic “Time Machine." Gardeners experience that same sensation of being transported into a mysterious new world every time they walk through a lattice arch or cross the threshold of a pocket garden. Brick paths take us into a familiar yet alien landscape where the ground beneath our feet is changing every day.  Weathered statuary hidden among the vines and branches call out to the deepest instincts within us, to celebrate beauty wherever and whenever we find it, even in the most simple things of life like a leaf uncurling in the sun. At one of my many ‘retirement’ parties over the years, friends gifted me with a rock carved with the title of my first breakthrough novel. TIME IN A GARDEN, the deep-chisled letters read. We are all gardeners at heart. Those precious strolls through the roots and stems and upturned faces of perennials in bloom can be as quieting as any therapy I know, as spiritual and grounding as the hush of any sanctuary.