Working in the garden seems to feed the imagination. In the silence of manual, heavy work, one is surrounded by one's own mind, as the mechanical movements of gardening repeat themselves seemingly ad infinitum.
Last night my thoughts took me far away and long ago to when I was probably nine or ten years old. My father had built us an outdoor playhouse, a floor model of a kit he had found at Sears in Rio, complete with a concrete foundation, glass windows, and mom-made-curtains. We played in it for what must have been a million hours--mind you, there are no cold winters in Rio.
As the row of peas stretched in front of me, I remembered my first little garden, in the back of our playhouse, a damp, shady plot of a mere few square centimeters of dirt completely unsuitable for growing anything. There I planted a few short rows of... weeds, that matched shaped and size, alone, enjoying it to no end. There was no vegetable garden at home, I had only a vague idea of what it looked like from illustrations in books.
I don't remember what happened to my little weed garden. But somehow my gardener spirit has remained still intact! There is a challenge out there, a competition with the elements of nature, to which I attempt to bring order and fruit by my hands' labor. I thank God for it, because it is a wonderful gift.
2 comments:
Thank you, dw, for that glimpse of your childhood!
Thank you, dh.
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