I discovered a delightful surprise a few days ago and decided
it would be a great topic for my first blog of the summer.
To my surprise, June passed without my blogging even once. In
the last seven years I never skipped a month of blogging and skipping June feels like the
equivalent of ditching a final exam— uncomfortable! But there are times
when your brain is too tired to do extra stuff. The school year exhausts me as
a parent, and by June 14, I was going on fumes. So I read and rested and did
stuff with my kiddos. Now, suddenly it’s almost mid-July. But the funny thing
about blogging is that it’s there when you’re ready to return. If you do it
just for fun, as I do, you don’t have an impatient editor breathing down your
neck, so you can return to it when you feel inspired. And a few days ago I
became inspired.
On Saturday morning I was out walking and I discovered
something amazing. I was in the Bay Area for the wedding of Ian and Maia, one
of my closest friends. That morning I took a walk, looking for Robson-Harrington
Park, which I’d found on my phone. When I walked into the park, I was very
surprised to see irregular brick walls undulating up a hillside. What was this?
It looked abandoned, and I was intrigued. Immediately I thought of a book my
daughter is reading this summer, The
Secret Garden. It’s one of my favorites, a book I’ve read at least twenty
times. In the book, a sad little girl finds the key to a garden that has been
locked for a decade. She spends months working in the garden and this
strengthens her body and her soul. Although the brick walls of the garden I
found were not behind a locked gate, the garden still felt like a secret
discovery because I hadn’t expected it.
The bricks were old and they had ceramic decoration laid
into the walls. A few things were growing, like artichoke plants, each topped
with colorful purple spikes. It was a surprising sign of life in a spot that
looked like it hadn’t been touched in years.
I had to know more. I kept wandering through the labyrinth
of brick walls, and soon discovered that there were garden plots full of living
things. It was a community garden. There were sunflowers, leeks, succulents,
fruit trees, tomatoes, roses, grapes, squash and flowers of every color. I saw
daisies as small as a fingernail and dahlias as large as melons. Beyond the
garden, redwood trees soared into the sky. Simultaneously I felt a sense of
peace and excitement. This isn’t breaking news, but being in nature is
tremendously healing. Surrounded by things that grow, I felt soothed and renewed.
Soon I saw two people working in one of the gardens. I asked
about the walled areas that looked abandoned and one gardener said that these
areas had been orchards at one point. In many ways, this garden seemed like
something created in another time. It didn’t feel like a new project, plotted
with square corners and precision. It felt like it grew right out of the
hillside with its curved walls, irregular twisting paths and natural flow.
Discovering the garden recharged me. The day before I’d been a mess of nerves, stewing about the past and anxious about the future. So finding the garden that morning was wonderful timing. The plants were just doing what plants do, but being around growing things gave me a sense of hope. It made me feel stronger about things that had been troubling me. Gardens begin from tiny seeds—things that only need a little bit of water and sun to grow strong—and finding the secret garden made me feel stronger, too. (Thank you, garden.)
After I left the garden, I walked through the winding roads
of San Anselmo. It was a quiet, hot July morning. I sweated and walked, sweated
and walked. Wisteria vines tumbled over fences and there was a tree house
nestled into tall redwood trees. Eventually I found my way back to the Air BnB
we rented and before all my observations left me, I wrote notes about the
garden on a paper plate, as I hadn’t brought writing paper with me when I
packed. (If you bring paper on a trip, you may not feel inspired. If you don’t bring paper on your trip,
you’ll have a blog post write itself in your head while you walk, and you’ll
find a paper plate at the rental studio and you’ll lay on the comfy rental bed,
sweating, with the fan on, and you’ll write, write, write because the ideas are
flowing.)
My time in the garden helped me summon the courage later
that day to get up in front of 120 wedding guests and give a tearful toast to
one of my closest friends for the last 32 years. I didn’t wait until I felt
100% ready—that will never happen!—but I decided that if I walked toward the
microphone, I’d do it. Getting to the microphone was harder than the talking
part. I got choked up but I kept going, because close friends are gifts, and
honoring a close friend on her wedding day is worth pushing myself.
What a meaningful weekend it was, being with Maia on her
wedding day. And finding a community garden by chance—and finding strength in
that surprise garden. Funny, I suppose you could find strength anyplace. Maybe
you could find courage in a 7-11, or in a junk yard. In a dirty public
bathroom. Anywhere! Maybe it just takes something kind of random to give you
the extra push you need.
I’m so glad that my wandering walk took me to a place that
inspired me, surprised me, and strengthened me. We all need that, and
discovering it by accident makes the gift even more meaningful because it’s
almost like the solution finds you.
Maybe a lot of answers to problems can be found in gardens (or maybe it’s that
my brain stops squawking at me in gardens and allows the answer to come to the
surface). Funny, isn’t it? You fret and worry and plan and scheme and come up
empty-handed. And when you’re least expecting it, the answers find you…
