The circle of life — garden-sized

“The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives.” — Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932), horticulturalist

It’s a chilly day for August — more like fall — but in the garden things are progressing as nicely as if every day this summer had been the perfect combination of sun and showers.

The peonies are spent, their heavy heads with a hangdog look. Soon the petals will fall, revealing the jester-hat seedpods within. The lilacs, too, their beautiful, fragrant blossoms now transformed into brown scruff.

But the day lilies are plumping up, ready for their big reveal. And the roses are still magnificent — dozens and dozens of fuchsia, red, white and coral blooms that turn our stone circle into a heavenly scented bower. It is here where we come after a hard day’s work in the garden, newly scrubbed and wearing fresh clothes, to sit at a little bistro table and have a glass of wine and enjoy the results of our labour.

We were sitting in that very spot the other day when a neighbour came to tell us they planned to sell their house and move in the fall. We fetched another chair and another glass and listened to his news.

It was shocking to imagine them gone and another family moved in. For 20 years our lives have played out side by side. The little boy I remember as a bespectacled toddler pedalling around our shared driveway on his tricycle is now grown and gainfully employed. Their daughter is a young woman with a partner and a house of her own. Our own children are thirtysomethings with burgeoning careers and busy lives.

Where did the time go? The garden has the answers — it has been spent growing and changing and blossoming and withering and blossoming again. It has been branching out and gaining ground, reaching for the sun and the rain.

I remember when we first imagined the garden, starting slowly, trimming the massive dogberry tree, picturing flowers and shrubs where none existed. It was a daunting task, turning a rocky, weed-ridden square into a riot of colour and texture and fragrance.

Now, mint, oregano, lavender and chives grow in a narrow bed alongside the fence. A Buddha statue keeps watch over the columbine and blue flag iris and coral bells. There’s a hosta garden and a rock garden, which this year has seen a power play by the loosestrife — it has erupted into a sea of yellow stars. Out of nowhere a black lace elderberry has sprung up, with its sharp-toothed leaves and masses of delicate flowers.

My husband and I often curse the weather on this wind-battered island in the merciless North Atlantic, but on a fine day in the garden all is forgiven.

When we first started weeding and planting and nurturing, we would often see other neighbours in their yard, on the diagonal from our own. They were an older couple, transplants, an Aussie and a Brit, both dedicated gardeners who had turned their plot into a lush, green arbour. They’d be kneeling, bent low to the ground, meticulously weeding, their white hair stirring in the breeze. Sometimes we’d take a break and talk to them over the fence. She often shared the fruits of their labour, offering rhubarb and recipes. They’re both gone now and their house belongs to somebody else, but I can still see them in my mind’s eye, slowly doing their circuit around the garden.

In the other yard that backs on to ours, much has changed as well. The two little girls who once watched wide-eyed from beyond the fence as we got married in our garden are now home visiting from their European universities with boyfriends in tow.

It occurs to me that we have become the elders in our little sliver of neighbourhood. We are traversing the yard on our kneelers, plucking out weeds, trying to restore order amid the chaos after days of bad weather kept us indoors. But it’s not a disheartening image. It is immensely rewarding to feel like the keepers of our little kingdom, even if it is a transitory post; to know that — for however long we have and can — we are making our plot of earth look better than it did when we found it. We are all entwined in the circle of life, the cycle of growth, maturity, blossoming and fading.

And at the end of a summer’s day, when your back aches and you’re smeared with mud and blood from an encounter with an unruly rose bush, there’s nowhere I’d rather sit and ponder life’s inscrutabilities, watching the sun dip and the shadows lengthen. The wind often dies then, the trees turn to silhouettes and the songbirds are hidden among the leaves, an unseen choir singing a charming song to mark the closing of another day.

Pam Frampton tends to her garden in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com