Bringing the Garden Inside

This photo offers a great illustration of a time when it was common for homeowners to have an intimate knowledge and daily interactions with their yards. I grew up with such gardens just outside the door, but many kids grow up now with yards meant only to flatter the house, with sterile lawn, rounded shrubs, and tinted mulch--just one more stop for a landscape crew. Progress back in the 1950s and '60s promised more leisure, but instead, people are busier, and discouraged from gardening by predacious deer and fear of ticks. But I still encounter gardens that are clearly loved and cared for, and serve as expressions of the owner's personality in the choice of plants and the degree of order.

What didn't register for me until more recently is how much of a garden is meant to be brought indoors. Peonies, for instance, flop over so easily in a rain. This was puzzling to me, but makes much more sense when viewed primarily as fragrant flowers best adapted for a vase. A friend described to me how she grew up drinking tea made of sweet woodruff from the garden. It tasted best if harvested before it flowered, and so that distinctive flavor became bonded for her with early spring. 

The photo was one of those that makes the rounds on facebook, and included an attribution and appealing sentiment, below. One bond I feel with plants is that, no matter how old they get, they still produce new growth each year. They are then, the physical representation of our inner selves, which continue to grow after our physical dimensions have reached their limit. Like the gardener in the photo, we as humans have brought the plant world's eternal youth inside. 

"I asked an elderly woman once what it was like to be old and to know that the majority of her life was now behind her.

She told me that she has been the same age her entire life. She said the voice inside of her head had never aged. She has always just been the same girl. Her mother's daughter. She had always wondered when she would grow up and be an old woman.

She said she watched her body age and her faculties dull but the person she is inside never got tired. She never aged. She never changed.

Remember, our spirits are eternal. Our souls are forever. The next time you encounter an elderly person, look at them and know they are still a child, just as you are still a child and children will always need love, attention and purpose."

~ Author Unknown
illustration by Tasha Tudor