The secret garden

My mind and body are ready for some much needed contact with the soil. But is much more than just that to me—it’s a stirring of the soul; is a “back to nature” kind of thing and irresistible desire that must be satisfied. I have everything needed to remind me of lovely days in the garden:

Flower seeds, spent roses from summer pasts, and candles for some romantic evenings under the spell of the moon…

But the pendulum on the season’s magical clock is not ticking yet… do you think it might be broken? I mean, spring, the time of sunshine and flowers is yet in the future around here. No sunshine, no flowers, no delicate perfume wafting in the air. In fact, just this morning we woke up to yet another blanket of white. Snow snow cold cold… what is one to do on days like these? Wait and wait and wait and, of course, dream a little too!

So I’m wishing upon a winter star—wishing for spring to hurry up and sunshine to shine down on me, and I’m dreaming of flowers and garden projects and showers of petals galore.

In the meantime, I’m here, in my lonesome and somewhat disheveled winter garden. There is something mysterious in the air this morning and a cold mist is blowing over the wall. The garden looks strangely lonesome and it’s so very still... it feels as if this is not my garden; as if I’m not really here, but in someone else’s garden… far, far away from here.

And Perhaps, I’m not mistaken. Perhaps I’m not really here but in another place at another time? Can you not hear it? It’s the robin’s song! Over there! Can you see it now?

Ah yes, I’m sure I’m in Mary Lennox’s secret garden!

And that must be her cheeky little blighter who guided her to the garden... “Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin, who had flown to his treetop, was still as all the rest. He did not even flutter his wings; he sat without stirring, and looked at Mary…”

“The high walls which shut it in were covered with the leafless stems of climbing roses which were so thick that they were matted together. Mary Lennox knew they were roses because she had seen a great many roses in India. All the ground was covered with grass of a wintry brown and out of it grew clumps of bushes which were surely rosebushes if they were alive. There were numbers of standard roses which had so spread their branches that they were like little trees..."

"There were other trees in the garden, and one of the things which made the place look strangest and loveliest was that climbing roses had run all over them and swung down long tendrils which made light swaying curtains, and here and there they had caught at each other or at a far-reaching branch and had crept from one tree to another and made lovely bridges of themselves".

There were neither leaves nor roses on them now and Mary did not know whether they were dead or alive, but their thin gray or brown branches and sprays looked like a sort of hazy mantle spreading over everything, walls, and trees, and even brown grass, where they had fallen from their fastenings and run along the ground..."

"It was this hazy tangle from tree to tree which made it all look so mysterious. Mary had thought it must be different from other gardens which had not been left all by themselves so long; and indeed it was different from any other place she had ever seen in her life..."

I know... this is not Mary Lennox's secret garden, but that’s exactly how I feel about this beloved place I called “my garden”—my unique and very special place; where I always want to be… so yes, on dreary cold days like these, I wait and dream, and hope for the return of the sun to my world of ice and bitter winds… are you this eager for spring too? Are you already seeing some flowers in your part of the world? Oh do fill my life with hope by sharing a little bit of sunshine!