To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow . . .
- Marilyn Gardner Woods
- 57 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Spring arrived recently, and my favorite place became the garden. San Diego’s sure-fire and steadfast sunshiny springtime weather ended the indoor fireplace season.
I am a gardener. My maiden name is Gardner which primarily comes from an English occupational surname for “keeper of the garden.”
I am that, but also a lover of plants, the life and death cycle so clearly illustrated in gardening, more each year of my adult life.
I’ve had many gardens in my many homes. Window boxes in an apartment in Dallas, full of heat-thriving, show-stopping ivy geraniums—double blossoms in fiery red.
A backyard plot with corn stalks planted by my small children in the two-story Cleveland home with a lake in the front expanse where they also learned to ice skate.
A large patio garden with a stone floor on the East Coast in New Rochelle where a Red Maple exploded in the autumn with vibrant color. On the West Coast, in Ventura, a sprinkling of Mariposa Lilies under a small fountain near the dining room French doors.
And the biggest garden of all—twenty acres of Valencia orange groves, a vineyard, and fields of French lavender and Matilija Poppies in our Pauma Valley paradise.
An exhilarating and exhausting twenty-year experience as farmers.
My terraced garden at 215, my home for the past decade, is now my safe and soulful space.
It’s the garden where we gathered during the pandemic when it afforded proper space for friends and family to stay safely distanced six- feet apart. Remember?
Today, it’s a gathering place for my family next-door and from faraway, my friends, my writing group, and my Salon.
It’s where my friends and family visiting from distant places unite. And where the assorted dogs of those friends and my family romp.
My garden, overlooking Maple Canyon and San Diego’s skyline, is where Robert and I courted secretly for a year.
I remember the day I moved in and my next-door son pointed out the empty pots from past owners he had salvaged thinking I might like to use them.
I did.
They are full of mature plants now.
There are four raised beds with lingering scars from failed vegetable gardening attempts. One year, the entire corn crop amounted to six ears.
In one bed, the mini-fruit on the dwarf pomegranate tree makes it looks like a Christmas tree with dozens of small red ornaments each winter.
In another bed, there’s a spreading Manzanita, close to four feet high. Robert gave it to me at Thanksgiving three years ago as a one-quart plant.
Also, a bowling ball I turned into a mosaic garden orb, a memorable art class in Ojai with best friends.
Fragrant plants the hummingbirds love, splashy succulents, and herbs—thyme, dill, white sage—overflow from the beds spaced at the west end of the garden in front of the arched wooden gate.
In the garden’s center, there’s a galvanized steel valentine crafted of a strip from a wine barrel hanging on a lower limb of the jacaranda tree. I added crystals which clink in the breeze. There’s a wind chime, comfortable chairs, my mom’s wrought iron plant stand, a nice big round table with an umbrella, and party lights strung overhead.
Most of all there’s peace in my garden at 215.
The perfect spot to slow down and be calm. A sip of morning light when I take my coffee outside and the birds welcome me. If I’m by myself, I might take a glass of wine out to my garden—an end-of-day-exhale moment.
Sometimes, I lie down under the jacaranda tree and let the sky and branches be my ceiling. On warm evenings, Robert and I sit outside, often in long spells of silence looking up at the stars. Occasionally, we hear our owl friend’s familiar hoot.
Peace abounds in my garden. And like Audrey Hepburn said above, "To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow."
What keeps my heart awake is colorful silence.
Claude Monet