Into the garden

After several weeks of self-induced funk, fuelled by reading several utterly-depressing (to me) biographies of alcohol-drug-and-mental-illness-induced real-life horror stories, I (at last) picked up Monty Don's "Around the World in 80 Gardens" this morning, as the eastern sun flooded the room and Easter awoke. It had been on the pile of "to-be-read" books for far too long; I had been distracted by dumb reviews by people who wanted the TV persona, not the gardener and author I adore. ("About time", he nods from the cover.)

Writing about pain and hardship can be part of the healing process; it can be a study of something we don't understand; it can be a way of saying, "I did the best I could but I feel guilty that I didn't do more, even though I couldn't". But it takes someone special to instead to be hurt, love, build a garden, see it destroyed, hurt some more, make more garden, share the love with others, embrace the garden as a natural and physical and mental medicine, use it to work with some of the people who might later write the books that have so depressed me lately... and at the same time to continue sharing this love and joy and one-ness with the earth despite challenges that would stop most people in their tracks. (Google Monty Don if you want more info.)

He makes me laugh, too:

" The story goes that Weize's teacher rode a lion to the site of the garden, where it lay down and refused to move. When it shook its mane, hairs flew out and where they touched the ground, each one of them turned into a lion cub. The monk, understandably astonished at this manifestation of the lion as a kind of dandelion, regarded this as a sign. As one might."

:-) You'll find me in the garden. Or making my long-planned secret bench.