Sad Gardens

I and my dear Ceridwen took a stroll in the neighborhood in the last hours of her visit. As always when we are together, she caused me to see things that are always all around me but that I have never seen before.

There are three gardens along a street near my place, all intended as little botanical shrines but now neglected. One was a community food garden for well over ten years that I remember, and then the land was bought up by an out-of-town investment group that has let it lie empty since around 2007. Another is the narrow front yard of a public health clinic, presenting a lineup of interesting herbs and trees. But the trees have not been tended for a few years and their dead limbs hang into the eye while higher, overgrown branches rub against the building. This last was the most ambitious and has the name Lower Mill Creek Garden, owned by a small university. As Ceridwen pointed out, its wonderful diversity of species has gone to its own devices and the stronger plants are choking out the weaker. Its avant garde system of re-using rainwater is quite efficiently watering choked walkways and an empty classroom area. This suspicious puss eyes us through a locked gate, perhaps wondering, "Who do you humans think you are? This is my turf!"

The little oasis languishes behind its expensive fence, the cat oversees the bees who graze on its pollen, and I am wishing that I was beside Ceridwen now as she travels back to her home and hearth in Wales by the Irish Sea.