Welcome to 2007 and Water Gardens

Here it is, the last day of 2006, New Year's Eve, and I am writing about water gardens. Gotta be absolutely crazy, right? Yup.

New Orleans, where I live, is torn, wounded and bleeding. She may not recover from the blow dealt to her on August 29th, 2005. She lies in intensive care now. And here I am writing about ponds? Where are my priorities?

I write of ponds, but I also write of our connections with the earth, with nature, with each other. Our connections that we have been torn from because we isolate ourselves in our offices and houses, seeing the out of doors during our morning commute and maybe during a summer vacation.

We have torn those connections apart, we long for them. But we don't even know they are gone. We have not realized that our need for nature is why we want trees, grass and gardens, why we visit parks, why we have houseplants and why we want water in our gardens. We long to find those connections we had as youngsters, but lost touch with somewhere along the way.

By finding our connections, by burying our hands in the earth, by admiring our water lilies, hearing our waterfalls, watching our goldfish, we find life to be not lonely, but filled with knowing that as John Donne, said, "No man is an island, entire of itself." We are part of a whole that we have not yet investigated.

I invite you on a journey to reestablish those connections with yourselves, your earth, your garden, with your pond as we investigate the art and science of pond building and keeping.