Friends invited me to visit a garden today. It's a place of rare plants, sculptures, and ponds built over the bones of an old New England dairy farm. We were given a VIP tour on a little golf cart by a kind and talented artist-gardener, and the experience was certainly a highlight of my emotional day. I discovered a new plant, the tassel flower (not pictured, sadly). C participated, and B hung out with her little friends. I couldn't stay long because I didn't want to push my luck with C, but I'd love to go back someday alone and wander with my camera. Honestly, I wanted to ask if they could use an extra hand; maybe someday I could work somewhere like that. It's a sanctuary, unfussy, close enough, and so peaceful.
On the drive home, I noticed the cornflower blue sky. I thought about the hugs I had received from friends and strangers. I thought about the competent nurse I spoke with on the phone and the kind woman who helped coordinate my son's referral to the ear nose & throat doctor. And I remembered, Of course, it is the suffering in life that brings us together, and it is the emptiness after crying that gives us capacity to hold the staggering beauty of the world.
A Summer Sanctuary by John Hall Ingham
I found a yellow flower in the grass,
A tiny flower with petals like a bell,
And yet, methought, more than a flower it was, —
More like a miracle.
Above, the sky was clear, save where at times
Soft-tinted fleeces drifted dreamily,
Bearing a benison to sunny climes
From altars of the sea.
In vestments green the pines about me gleamed
Like priests that tend the sacrificial fire;
And the faint-lowing cattle almost seemed
Some far intoning choir.
It was a place and an occasion meet
For some high, solemn wonder to befall;
And, when I saw the flower at my feet,
I understood it all.
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