Passion

Ports of Paradise 'Emerald Isle' just coming into bloom

My friend Margaret must have been close to 50 years old when I first met her over 40 years ago. I was totally new to the mid-west having grown up in New England. My new wife had actually dated one of Margaret's sons when she was in high school and when we moved into the area we were treated like family. With a new wife, my first full time job, and a new home, I really had no interest in gardening... actually that sort of thing was the farthest thing from my mind. Margaret was persistent and we would often be invited to her family's home and extensive gardens. In the spring she would bring us huge bouquets of daffodils and we would be encouraged to walk through her two acres of gardens whenever something new came into bloom. She and her husband got us interested in starting annuals from seed and would find good deals on trees and shrubs that they would share with us.

I had become interested in creating something out of this dilapidated old cheese factory and Margaret's three younger high school aged sons were often sent over to help me out. Margaret was very well read and her family was very musical. We directed a musical together with another teacher in the district that first year and got to know each other very well. Margaret had a large library of gardening books and I became a frequent borrower and it wasn't long before I was hooked on gardening.

Margaret had a persitent situation with skin cancers, probably related to her growing up on a farm. This didn't stop her for a moment and after she left teaching, she could be found in the gardens from first light until the sun became too dangerous later in the morning. The gardens were always pristine.

As a young man, I had a very hard time understanding why Margaret kept planting young trees as she grew older and older. I no longer have any difficulty at all relating to this. True gardeners are the pentultimate optimists. We live for and love change in the gardens even if we find it difficult in other aspects of life. We grow and mature in the natural world and we leave our discouragements at the garden gate. I called this post 'passion' and we gardeners experience this passion through our entire life... it's a passion of being close to creation, and for many of us, the Creator. I find myself becoming more passionate the older I become... there is so much I won't experience in the future in these gardens, but perhaps I will have made the world a slightly better place for having worked in them and planted seeds, and small trees.  Afterall, we are commanded to love others and sharing the garden is nothing less than sharing our love for people... bringing some measure of happiness into the lives of any who would appreciate the gift.

God willing, perhaps Oak Lawn will be a place that someone else will be passionate about in the distant future... and who knows... perhaps I will live to see little whips of trees that I plant a decade from now come to fruition that I might sit in their shade and marvel at their beauty. A true gardener never says 'why plant another tree... it's too much work, and I'm getting too old'... I learned that lesson very well from my friend Margaret... Larry

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