A Season Beyond Words: Memories, Messengers and Elusive Moonflowers in the Twenty-Twenty Garden

Black-Eyed Susan with Ben's Purple-Leaf Sand Cherry in background.

This year's chaotic, confused calendar tells us it's November: we see evidence of advancing autumn all around us, and we feel it in the air. As I've walked the garden over the past few weeks, assessing what needs to be done before hard frost... closing beds, cutting back the spent foliage of spring and summer, moving select plants to winter shelter, I've had time and opportunity to ruminate on an extraordinary year... the vagaries of pandemic life, a political season that's been alternately head-scratching, brow-furrowing, eyebrow-raising, jaw-dropping, and stomach-churning... public pain and social strife coupled with private grieving and painstaking adjustment following the loss of Ben. I've found myself rummaging for words, reaching for language that captures the The Way Things Are Now. I've thought, momentarily, that I've hit upon adequate ones, only to reach the very Twenty-Twenty conclusion: It's all beyond words. 

Autumn Past: Ben sits by the Burning Bush.

This year's Burning Bush.

Beyond words: how can that be? As long as I can remember, I've been a collector of words: gathering them, savoring them, tucking them away, calling them forth when needed, and then filing them away again for future use. I remember sitting in a late-1970s South-Central Pennsylvania High School English class led by Mr. Shirley, late-1970s South-Central Pennsylvania English instructor and Varsity Baseball coach, as he attempted to whip up academic enthusiasm for Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales. I remember the instructor-coach, all earnestness and all red-in-the-face, struggling to deliver an authentic literary experience, reading passages from an epic poem in Old English, reciting excerpts from a prose poem in Middle English, to a classroom of fidgety, patently unreceptive late-1970s South-Central Pennsylvania teenagers. Feeling a rush of empathy and strangely inspired by this brave-albeit-bumbling oratory exercise, I raised my hand and volunteered something resembling insight apropos mead halls and the monster Grendel... or maybe it was something about satirical pilgrimages and The Wife of Bath, prompting the guy who sat in front of me-- ironically, one of my future husband's friends and a teammate on Mr. Shirley's Varsity Baseball Team-- to pivot in his desk and growl in neither Old English nor Middle English but in distinctly late-1970s South-Central Pennsylvania sotto voce, You are a brown-noser and a walking dictionary. I remember taking issue with the former but feeling flattered by the latter.

 

She was a primrose... from The Canterbury Tales.

Yellow Primrose from Mom and Dad Lebo's garden meets Clematis from Mom and Dad Massam's place.

A walking dictionary: I met Brad in middle school typing class. We were seated alphabetically-by-last name, and we typed lots of words, dutifully pecking The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, to the rudimentary rhythm of Simon and Garfunkel's I'd Rather Be a Hammer Than a Nail and under constant mid-1970s South-Central Pennsylvania threat of knuckle-rapping if we peeked at the keys while typing. Brad and I became friends in high school, in Advanced Comp and Speech class, once again seated alphabetically-by-last-name, where he, like his baseball teammate, believed me to be a bit of a brown-noser, if not a walking dictionary. To this day, I consider his three-point essay entitled Salt to be one of the finest examples of expository writing composed during the high school era, certainly the most compelling about the harvesting of sodium chloride and its subsequent preservation and seasoning of food. No doubt about it, I fell in love with Brad for reasons including, but not limited to, his way with words and his mastery of our native tongue. Moving beyond alphabetically-by-last-name, we dated, got married... built a life, a library, and a little-yet-loving, laughter-filled family. It's been a decades-long conversation; mostly in prose, although we have composed some clever-if-off-color limericks along the way.

Mother's Day Coleus from Ben.

It's not surprising, then, that Ben would be a collector of words. He spoke in charmingly rhetorical sentences well before he took his first steps. During leisurely mornings on Longwood Avenue, lounging in footy pajamas, parked on the kitchen floor, taking lusty swigs of apple juice from a sippy cup, Ben would raise topics for discussion, minus the sibilant s sound: Light bulb burned out. Where id Connecticut. What id a Great Horned Owl. Won't we never hee that again. All through elementary school and in the course of rigorous speech therapy, Ben published The Broadview Post, a venerable tabloid-style almost-daily, produced with magic marker and colored pencil at a Little Tykes desk, delivered bright-and-early to bedside or kitchen table. There were shocking, exclamatory headlines: Marina Blast Kills 250,000! It's All Bill Clinton's Fault! Broadview Terrace Gets New National Park! High school student, undergraduate student, graduate student, writer-editor in a dream-come-true job at The Thoroughbred Daily News... in the time that he walked and and ran across this earth, Ben collected words and used them well and wisely.

Ben with a Great Horned Garden Owl.

And so, all through this year like no other-- across winter and spring, athwart summer and early autumn-- I've tried to collect words. A few weeks ago, I pulled a volume from the book shelf-- my tattered, tried-and-true Roget's Thesaurus, a cherished birthday gift to South-Central Pennsylvania teenage me from Grandma Wolfe. I've used it, used it a lot over the years. When its alphabetical tabs fell out and its binding began to disintegrate in the 1990s, I lovingly glued it and re-covered it with thick, glossy garden-themed wrapping paper. Leafing through it in 2020, I've wondered at how the world and the words have changed since its 1977 publication.

The well-used Roget's Thesaurus.

In recent days, too, I've caught myself pausing in the garden, rake in hand, watching leaves from our old White Oak drift through brisk air and settle, silently and gracefully, on the ground. And I've thought, What do we do when the story is beyond words? When language is inadequate to express the temper of the times, when vocabulary fails to capture the tone of the season? When a walking dictionary is at a loss for words, when the cherished thesaurus offers no synonym or antonym for the story? It's been a year since we said goodbye to Ben. We sat with him in the hushed, dimmed light of early evening, and there were no words-- simply an eloquent squeeze of the hand, the briefest brush of a kiss, a knowing look across the room. Through the hours and days and weeks and months that followed, I wandered the garden, continuing to place one foot in front of the other, and walked with Brad on winding, worthwhile trails, carrying on with the journey. And every step of the way, I've considered the conundrum: there are words for all of it, but there are no words. 

Japanese Maple, one that Brad and Ben rehabilitated as a sapling.

Self-seeding Morning Glory, Goldenrod, and New England Aster meet in unplanned harmony.

Beyond considering the conundrum, I've reaffirmed this year that I'm a connoisseur of garden soil, a bit of a nature paparazzi and blogger... equal parts pragmatist and poet, frustrated farmer and former English Lit major. Indeed, digging and delving in the dirt, holding camera at the ready in the garden and on the trail, and keeping pen and paper handy at home, have been tremendous sources of comfort and healing through arduous days and have expanded a woefully inadequate vocabulary of grief. Not always, and not on all days... but sometimes, just sometimes, the words and images mingle with memories and messengers, achieving a synthesis, an expression of what the heart and mind are holding in this season beyond words. 

An Eastern Tiger Swallowtail visits our Lantana.

Memories: the garden that wraps around our stone-and-yellow-clapboard Cape Cod is full of memories. We've called this place home for nearly three decades, so each shaded nook and every sun-splashed cranny evokes a remembrance of lazing and laboring, love and laughter, loss and learning... in short, of our shared lives.

In the Garden.

Quince blooms along our retaining wall.

Look back and remember. Look back at 5-year-old Ben in the backyard, suggesting-- absent that sibilant s-- Let take a rate, Daddy-o. Remember him vanishing around one corner of the house, soon to emerge from the opposite corner, running with exuberance, circuit after circuit. Look back at 7-year-old Ben rolling diecast cars down the Bilco cellar door, hour after hour, issuing colorful race calls that I could hear through the open kitchen window. Remember 9-year-old Ben, football tucked in the crook of his arm, taking flying leaps from the retaining wall, tumbling across green grass and fallen leaves in the yard below, brimming with unreserved joy on an autumn Sunday afternoon. Look back at high school Ben, returned from a summer training run, grinning and slurping an ice pop, soaking those long-long legs in a garden hose-filled and ice cube-bobbing garbage can. Remember how he watered the garden with the water after his soak... It's good fertilizer, It'll make the garden grow, still grinning. Look over there at the Purple-Leaf Sand Cherry and remember how college Ben rescued it from beneath an unceremonious dumping of autumn superstorm debris. It bloomed beautifully, poignantly, this year.

Wine and Roses Weigela, Variegated Red Twig Dogwood, Rhodendron, and Shrubby St. John's Wort line the Bilco Door, aka Ben's diecast car ramp.

Ben rescues the Purple Leaf Sand Cherry from a jumble of White Pine limbs.

The Purple Leaf Sand Cherry blooms in April.

Look back and remember this: Ben walking the garden last summer, slowly, slowly... deliberately, determinedly, with dignity... walking, looking, occasionally pausing to snap a photo with his cell phone camera. A tree. A flower. A bird. The sky. Look, and remember gifts from Mother's Days past:... Geranium, Coleus, Asiatic Lily... still flourishing in the garden this year, still sharing memories, delivering messages that elude translation, something beyond words.  

A Mother's Day Geranium from Ben blooms in a garden nook.

Raindrops rest on Asiatic Lilies, another Mother's Day gift from Ben.

Pay attention.... There were messengers in the garden this year: they arrived unannounced and unexpectedly, delivering missives to guide us through a season beyond words. These were, of course, metaphorical messengers: it's no secret that I have an aversion to anthropomorphism, to talking animals, in literature and in life. I know, I know... what about Charlotte's Web? Winnie-the-Pooh? Frog and Toad Are Friends? The Cat in the Hat? I read them... and moved on. Butterflies on branches, Robins splashing in the birdbath, Bumblebees in Ben's Bee Bush, Hummingbirds with whirring wings, Dragonflies demonstrating ancient agility, and a Frog thinking deep amphibious thoughts on a mossy rock by our petite pond... no words, but messengers nonetheless.

A Message of Serenity: Monarch pauses on a graceful Japanese Maple branch.

A Message of Joy: Slightly disheveled Robin makes an afternoon stop at our birdbath.

A Message of  Purpose: It was business as usual in Ben's Bee Bush.

A Message of Resiliency: Hummingbird visits feeder on our Old Dogwood Tree.

A Message of  Wisdom: Common Whitetail Dragonfly rests on a wall stone.

A Message of Mindfulness and Reflection: Resident Northern Green frog perches on a mossy rock.

One midafternoon in early June, I glanced up from my digging and delving and saw the moon set serenely in a sky as blue and wise as Ben's eyes. It was a waxing moon, floating high above the horizon, capturing and reflecting sunlight through wispy cirrus clouds. While I know there are mundane, temporal reasons for an afternoon moon, in the moment, the image struck me as poetic, mystical even. 

Mid-Afternoon moon in June.

Meanwhile, on the ground, I was watching and waiting-- late spring, summer, early autumn-- for moonflowers to bloom. I soaked the seeds and sowed them, watered regularly, fertilized fervently. Through hours and days and weeks and months, I watched and waited, waited and watched. I longed to gaze into the inscrutable, silky depths of a one-night-only bloom, to take in the heady, unmistakable fragrance, the culmination of a season of tending and care. Seeds became seedlings; seedlings grew into twining vines. The vine produced a profusion of promising buds, buds that would, I believed, produce lovely blooms. But the Twenty-Twenty calendar had a different plan: several precipitous thermometer dips and gusty storms in September sent bud-after-bud drooping and dropping to the earth.  

 

Ben beneath the arbor where moonflowers grow.

Moonflower buds.

The Spiraling Sphere of Possibility: Moonflower bud, 2020.

The tandem truths of the moon and the moonflower give me pause. The moon: enduring, everlasting, immutable, pure reflected light. The moonflower: ephemeral, evanescent, inscrutable, soon passing from sight. The juxtaposition of the two is at once heartbreaking and hope-filled, and it describes so much of our shared story. And so, as days grow shorter and autumn advances, as a full moon bathes the last night of October in alabaster light, I receive and accept the message from this year's elusive moonflowers... sometimes we are meant to bide with memory, destined to dwell in a spiraling sphere of possibility. Sometimes, despite our best efforts, what we hope for cannot be. The moonflower will not bloom-- but the moon still hangs in the sky; the tides still roll in and out; the earth still turns; the seasons change-- and we continue on, placing one foot in front of the other.

Moonflower, circa 2018.

As we put the Twenty-Twenty garden to rest, bracing for the bare bones and sharp edges of winter, we mark a difficult anniversary, honoring Ben's story and preparing for another spin around the sun in Uncertain Times. The world, we've learned, will always hold grief and offer up sorrow-- and it will sometimes devolve into chaotic thought and utter confusion. But in the wake of grief, we find gratitude for memories. And beneath the burden of sorrow, there are messages of solace. And there will be moments, when the light is right in the sky, when a breeze moves almost imperceptibly through the old oak tree... there will be moments when we're gazing upward, feet planted firmly on the ground, when we realize that gratitude can fill a fractured heart, that solace leads to moments of joy... that it's possible to find comfort amidst chaos. Past, present, all the time yet to be: so much of the story is beautiful, and most of it is beyond words.  

 

Late day, light, our big old White Oak in silhouette.

Memory and Metaphor: Gathering a Mother's Day Bouquet

Still Blooming: 
Geranium from Ben, 2016.

In various and unanticipated ways, Mother's Day will be different for all of us this year. For some, it will be honored at unprecedented distance from loved ones; for some, it will be passed in extraordinarily close proximity to those loved ones. For some, it will celebrate the promise of new life; and for some, it will be marked with memory, by holding those we've loved and lost close in our hearts. Around here, Mother's Day has always involved spending time in the garden, and that will not change this year. There will be wandering and wondering, remembering and reflecting... and there will be taking a moment to gather a metaphorical Mother's Day bouquet.

Every spring, Vinca, sometimes known as Periwinkle, sometimes known as Joy-of-the-Ground, awakens in the wooded border of our garden. This hard-working, always-green ground cover is alternatively called Myrtle-- Grandma Lebo's given name. The Victorian language of flowers tells us that Myrtle signifies the pleasure of memory, and as I look across an expanse of glossy foliage filling the landscape without a fuss, star-shaped lavender-blue flowers nodding in dappled sunlight, I remember childhood Sunday visits to Grandpa and Grandma Lebo's farm:

Periwinkle Myrtle, Grandma Lebo.

We would pile into the big country kitchen and, before the screen door slammed shut behind us, we were ushered to the long planked dining table and offered a slice of pie: blueberry, apple, rhubarb, mincemeat (!) or my favorite, peach… buttery crust soaked in sweet fruit juice. Aunts and uncles and cousins were perched on chairs and stools lining the kitchen, talking and listening and laughing, as Grandma—farm wife, mother of ten, grandmother to dozens—moved from stove to sink to refrigerator—moving, moving, never sitting, wiping her fine-boned, blue veined hands on her apron, blue eyes smiling, wispy silver hair wrapped in a low bun. Grandma Lebo, moving amidst the generations without a fuss....

Bleeding Heart, Grandma Wolfe.

The Bleeding Heart that appears each springtime by our backyard gate recalls a long-ago Bleeding Heart that flourished in a tranquil corner of Grandma Wolfe's yard. That ephemerally-blooming perennial caught the eyes and captured the imaginations of sisters and cousins; bony-kneed and breathless, we would stop to gaze upon it before continuing on wild ramblings across a rolling expanse of Pennsylvania lawn. Today, as I pause to contemplate graceful arching chains of fuchsia-and-white pendant hearts, I remember quiet times with Grandma Wolfe: she sitting in her favorite upholstered chair, me sitting at a nearby desk, doodling and drawing childish masterpieces while we talked and talked and talked some more about many things, some trivial, some profound, some words of gentle encouragement that I hold and cherish in my heart of hearts.

African Violet, Grandma Melhorn.

Memories of Grandma Melhorn are scattered about the house: the hand-written pie crust recipe in a kitchen drawer, hand-crocheted slippers in a closet shoe box, hand-crafted stuffed bears tucked away in quiet corners… and African violets cultivated from her beautiful violet collection, thriving, guileless and undemanding, in our sunny bay window. Velvet green leaves, cheerful sprays of pink-or-purple flowers: the language of flowers tells us that violets signify watchfulness and faithfulness, and Grandma’s violets confer a legacy uncomplicated, unwavering love to our windowsill.

Clematis, Mom Massam. 

Each spring Mom Massam's heirloom Clematis begins its determined climb up our lamp post, a coiling, curling time-lapse ascent culminating in a profusion of brilliant pink-blooms twining her memory to our garden. I remember Mom Massam's common sense and uncommon care, her devotion and dedication to house and home and happy holidays, her patience and practical advice as I became a wife to her son and then a mother to a son. And let’s not forget her Jiffy Cake recipe....

Yellow Primrose, Mom Lebo.

The swath of Yellow Primrose is not yet blooming. In a week or two, though, we'll welcome to the garden cups-and-saucers of abiding sunshine that get bees a-buzzing and butterflies all a-flutter. In autumn, the foliage turns a bronzed orange-red that is seasonally appropriate and pleasing to the eye. All of this from a shovel-clump of transplanted perennial mish-mash, transported across state lines from Mom and Dad's house on Knepper Drive in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

I think of Mom: her simultaneously conventional and unconventional style of mothering—a confidante, a militant conversationalist, a creative spirit with a compassionate heart. The rough, raw edges of saying goodbye to her have smoothed and grown more subtle through time, but I miss her still.

Beginnings and Endings and Beginning Again:
Waiting for Ben's Asiatic Lilies to Bloom.

Across the years and through the seasons, I've come to understand that Motherhood and Gardening are not unalike. They are noble, magnificent, disorderly, imperfect endeavors: both involve working and watching and waiting and worrying and wondering and working some more. There are times of trial-and-error, episodes of triumph-and-terror. Both provide moments of pure joy and sheer wonder at miracles, large and small, some predicted and many utterly unforeseen. Mothers and Gardeners learn, across the years and through the seasons, the artful science of nurturing: when to nudge, when to practice benign neglect, when to dig and delve, and when to throw hands in the air and let nature take its proverbial course. There are beginnings and endings, and there is beginning again. And there are memories... bright, blooming memories to sustain us-- memories of mothering, and of the mothers who've touched our lives. 

Ben's Asiatic Lilies in Bloom, Mother's Day Past. 

Unabashed Forsythia... and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad April Fools Day of a Central Pennsylvania Youth

On this blue-sky first-of-April morning, I stand at the kitchen window, gazing across a gradually greening backyard, admiring a swath of decades-old forsythia fairly bursting with sunshine-yellow flowers on shoots of gray-brown bark. Ah, Forsythia: brazen harbinger of spring, native to far eastern China and southeastern Europe, named for eighteenth-century Scottish horticulturalist William Forsyth. The turn of the calendar and the garden's unabashed splash of color transport me to a long-ago April Fools' Day in Central Pennsylvania and to another forsythia bush that bloomed by our house on Grantham Road....

It was a pranky plan conceived by Big Sister—me— in the comfortable depths of our wood-paneled rec room. In the finest creative, corrupting tradition of Big Sisters, I enlisted the help of adorable, adoring Little Sister Debbie to join me in its execution. Full of April Foolery, running on skinny little legs, waving skinny little arms, we barreled out the back door, across the carport, around the corner of the house to where Dad was diligently edging the forsythia bed. “Dad! Dad! Mom just fell down the steps!” we shouted breathlessly. This was patently not true. Our Mother was ensconced in our late-1960s Central Pennsylvania kitchen, unwittingly preparing a late-1960s Central Pennsylvania lunch: probably pimiento and olive loaf sandwiches, or peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches, served in all likelihood with canned Del Monte Fruit Cocktail and Campbell’s Bean with Bacon Soup.

Now, the Victorian language of flowers tells us that forsythia signifies anticipation—and indeed, in that moment, a great sense of domestic anticipation hung in the early spring air. Wait for it... Dad blanching, dropping his shovel, bolting toward the house. Wait for it... Little Sister Debbie and I, jumping up and down in the golden glow of forsythia and April foolery, exclaiming in unison, “APRIL FOOL! APRIL FOOL! APRIL FOOL!” Wait for it... Dad wheeling around, storming toward us and, with jaw set and blue eyes a-blazin’, informing us in the strongest terms available to a late-1960s Central Pennsylvania Dad that whimsical fabrications proclaiming a tumble by one’s mother IS NEITHER AN AMUSING NOR AN APPROPRIATE APRIL FOOLS’ JOKE.

The calendar turns and turns and turns; I gaze out the kitchen window. As this brief recollection from my Central Pennsylvania childhood illustrates, I am not much of a prank planner: I was and always will be a woeful April Fooler. And as much as I've marveled at the brightness, the cheerfulness, the sheer welcome spring-ness of forsythia through the years, I always look forward to more nuanced, more thoughtful, more subtle garden color yet to come. 

Forsythia is pure joy. There is not an ounce, not a glimmer of sadness or even knowledge in forsythia. Pure, undiluted, untouched joy.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Social Distancing and a Springtime Like No Other: Meeting in the Gardens of Memory, along a Pathway of Dreams....

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature-- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter. --Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

Well then. Through circumstance and decree, we've been given ample time and abundant opportunity to take six giant steps away from Twenty-Twenty society, to distance ourselves and to contemplate so many things, including, but not limited to: the sudden scarcity of toilet paper, the perpetual wonder of scrubbing with soap-and-water, the perks and perils of social media... the repeated refrains of nature, the beauty of the earth. Contradictions abound. In a strange new world of ransacked-to-empty shelves, abundant spring is springing all around us. In a time of stay-away living, we have the opportunity to welcome the season to our own backyards, to get up-close in the garden, to commune with local nature. Even as clouds of concern and confusion gather, even as an invisible viral storm sweeps across our community and rests upon our doorstep, we bear witness to optimistically budding forsythia, weigela, dogwood, quince, lilac. As the financial markets spiral downward, vinca and morning glory vines begin their annual climb-to-the-heavens. And as life-as-we've-come-to-expect-it devolves and dissolves before our eyes, intrepid tulips, nodding daffodils, and cheerful crocuses emerge through mulch in freshly tidied beds, announcing, We're here. Begin again.

Begin again: A Nodding Daffodil.

I've long suspected and recently affirmed, through reading and bereavement experience, the healthful, healing, hope-filled benefits of passing quality time outdoors. A mere fifteen minutes a day usually does the trick: a meandering walk in the woods, a meditative respite on a garden or park bench, a spin around the backyard-- they all confer tremendous therapeutic advantage, centering us emotionally, restoring creative thought, perking us up physically. A morale boost from Mother Nature, so to speak. 

Begin again: A Hopeful Crocus.

It's interesting to note that on almost-daily ambulations along local trails, social distancing actually connects us to other socially-distanced human beings: irritatingly, on occasion, when a suspiciously vacuous, irrefutably raucous, absolutely incessant conversation echoes through the forest... out-chattering the birds, out-babbling a brook, out-blustering the breeze. But more often than not, it's a Congenial Good Morning at twenty paces, a Rueful Smile at thirty paces, a We're-In-This-Together Wave at forty paces.

Fresh Air and Sunshine: Optimistic Forysthia.

Our family tree is filled with farmers, with gardeners, with long-ago and recently lost loved ones who found their livelihood or derived life benefit from digging and delving in the dirt. I have fond early memories of working a patch of ground on Grandpa and Grandma L's Central Pennsylvania farm: picking peas and lima beans, later sitting on the Knepper Drive back porch with Dad and Sisters shelling those peas and beans, a sensory feast: the crisp-to-the-touch snap, the earthy smell, the sound of vegetable harvest plunking into large metal pots. Indeed, I hold fast to garden memories and associated remembrances of lives well-lived, of people well-loved. Today, I'm hearing an infinitely healing and repeated refrain, connecting past to present to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow....

Clematis: Climbing a Trellis in Mom and Dad M's Garden... Twining on Our Lamp Post.

Yellow Primrose: Rambling Poolside at Mom and Dad L's House... Running a Bit Wild in Our Garden.

Bleeding Heart: Clustered in a Bed at Grandpa and Grandma W's House... Lining a Pathway in Our Garden.

Young Ben took his time in the garden seriously. Declaring himself a John Deere Worker Guy, he watered, he raked, he harvested little green apples, succulent pears, and blackberries-by-the-fistful with Grandpa Massam, and he toured the Knepper Drive acre on a beloved lawn tractor with Grandpa Lebo. He recorded the progress of flora and the presence of fauna in the nooks and crannies of our idyllic little yard. Sometimes, I'd look out the kitchen window and see him paused from his diligent work of play, standing still, smiling up at the blue sky, gazing at a garden flower, watching a rabbit nibbling clover. Ben in the garden: uncomplicated, incalculable, irreplaceable goodness....

Ben the Gardener: In Grandpa and Grandma L's Backyard.

Two Optimists in the Orchard: Ben and Grandpa M Harvest Apples.

Two Worker Guys in the Backyard: Ben and Grandpa L Ride the John Deere.

Life of late has become, with a socially distanced nod of acknowledgment to Alice in Wonderland... curiouser and curiouser, increasingly Tweedledummed and Tweedledeed, and riddled with rabbit holes. The photo below, Mom's Alice books arrayed with a lovely lantana on our patio, conveys a fine and timely sentiment, first voiced by ancient Roman statesman Cicero: If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need....

In the gardens of memory, in the palace of dreams, that is where you and I shall meet. 

--The Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party is summarily scrapped, no doubt. As we adjust to this new brand of March Madness-- tournaments cancelled, events postponed indefinitely, calendars shredded, school lessons launched into cyberspace, life-as-we've-come-to-expect-it on open-ended hold-- there are moments when it seems that we're in jeopardy of becoming, collectively and colloquially, Mad-as-the-Hatter and twice-as-distanced as we're meant to be. No hand shaking, no high-fiving, no hugging... a bit of elbow bumping, perhaps, and a fair amount of questionably productive political finger-pointing. How can we bide this time? How can we bridge the space between us? How can we live, thrive even, in an extraordinary moment, in this springtime like no other? Let's meet, for now, in the gardens of memory and, if not in the palace of dreams, then someplace humbler, quainter, more local. Let's meet and find our way forward along a pathway of dreams: a sun-dappled trace, lined with close-to-the-heart blooms, laced with laughter and good humor, laden with healing words, patience, resiliency, reason for hope... all promises kept, all challenges met.

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow. -- Audrey Hepburn