The Garden

"The garden is one of the two great metaphors for humanity. The other, of course, is the river. Metaphors are a great language tool, because they explain the unknown in terms of the known.

But...the garden did not start out as metaphor. It started out as a paradise. Then, as now, the garden is about life and beauty and the impermanence of all living things. The garden is about feeding your children, providing food for the tribe... And what a wonderful relief every so often to know who the enemy is--because in the garden, the enemy is everything: the aphids, the weather, time. And so you pour yourself into it, care so much, and see up close so much birth and growth and beauty and danger and triumph--and then everything dies anyway, right? But you just keep doing it."

                                                                                            Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

May is a good time in the garden. The seeds I planted have come up, and the seedlings have yet to be desecrated by heat, drought, or varmints. The mesquitos haven't appeared, so we spend a lot of time outside. The things I planted last year surprised me by surviving til this year. Our grape vine luxuriates; I'm sure Bacchus holds midnight revels beneath the arbor. A pair of robins is nesting in the pergola.