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The Gardens of Your Life

© Carol Wallace

In my neighbors' yard was an old apple tree. A climbable apple tree, except that we children were forbidden to climb it after the neighbors' son fell out of it and broke his arm. In my own yard was a maple that seemed to me to be enormous - certainly far too tall and straight to ever climb. And so I was earthbound.

I found a picture of that 'enormous' maple last year - it must have been all of 6" in girth - but then, at 4, I wasn't much bigger, and not terribly familiar with the size to which a maple would eventually grow. All I knew was a secret desire was to climb the apple tree - or any tree, and contemplate the world from my secret place. In this newly built subdivision, with it's freshly planted sticks of trees, that old apple tree was my only chance for fulfillment - and it was tabu. Perhaps that is why we left apple tree in our garden of today, even though it was somewhat in the way of the gazebo - so I could finally have a tree to climb.

That was the first garden of my life.

The second was my grandmother's garden. She died before I was 8, and all that remains in my mind is an impression of the shade of two old fruit trees, and the scent and taste of a honeysuckle vine which both fascinated me and terrified me because of the bees that swarmed to it before I could pluck a blossom and sip the nectar. In memory it was a peaceful place, with shafts of sunlight piercing through the trees and a Fairy rose climbing the wooden fence at the back. There was even a garden gate, which led, it's true, only to an alley - but it was fun to swing on that gate, and hold conversations with the neighbor in back. And the very idea of a gate promised untold mysteries to my child's mind.

Over the garden fence had real meaning there, as I recall my grandmother and her neighbor trading cuttings, bouquets, advice and gossip across it. My grandmother's garden was, to me, a refuge, a place to feel protected and loved and happy. A particular mix of shade and sunlight and fragrance brings that feeling back, even now. The garden gate (being installed even as I type) recreates that sense for me of being admitted to a special world, and of being protected, enclosed and safe from workaday cares.

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