A Mockingbird Morning

“Life is like licking honey from a thorn.” Anonymous

Ah, those summer mornings when the dew has left its last traces of essence on the lilies and the bumble bees begin their pollinating deliveries. It’s such a morning when shards of August sunlight are cast streaming through the oaks lighting up the garden’s spectacle of colors.

You have coffee sitting in the shade of the pool arbor. You admire your garden. The fresh ambience of the day sets a swoon over the landscape. In your mind a vision appears. Over there, in the far corner of the garden, you see him, the gardener. He sits in the shadows of an imaginary tool shed.

He wipes periodically the perspiration on his face with a red bandana. His white shirt is soaked with sweat. His movements are measured in slow motion. He appears to be unconcerned, resting in an obvious peace of mind. He sips iced tea from a moisture-beaded glass like your grandmother used. His legs are crossed.

His implements hang orderly on the weathered wooden wall, like workers relieved from their recent toil. Their handles are worn and slick, the shears sharp and shiny. A shovel lies prostrate in a red wheelbarrow. His gloves lay on the bench beside him. A thin coating of dust covers his boots.

A cool breeze stirs the wind chimes hanging above the open door of the shed. The tin roof occasionally buckles with a popping sound in the day’s beginning heat. Overhead a fly buzzes. The gardener is motionless. He rests from his morning labors.

Gardens are solitary and proprietary creations. They yield clues to a gardener’s visions. They’re as much an art as a science. New gardens, like children, appear wild and sparse, haphazard, without symmetry. Like fine art, the masterpiece is seen only in the eyes of the gardener. But beginnings are never endings.

Time is a gardener’s friend. Nature counts time in seconds, not years. It’s one breath at a time. Anxiety is an unwelcomed guest in gardens. Labor is daily, nothing hurried, nothing rushed. Gentle snips with the pruning clipper treat the boxwoods tenderly. Progress is slow and imperceptible.

Gardens are the provenance of creatures, small and large. Deer nibble the roses, moles make subterranean trails. All have roles. Yonder gardener has shifted slightly on his bench. He seems to be watching the Whirling Butterfly plant, the guara.

Looking closely, you see a bee hanging from the tiny flower on the end of the guara’s long stalk. It rides the flower as in a rodeo while the wind twists and turns the tendril. It yields a Zen-like quality. The gardener seems untroubled with the concept. Perhaps he knows there’s a better way than Zen to achieve permanent nirvana.

A lone Monarch butterfly floats between the yellow lantana and the lavender garlic plants, indecisive with the abundance of choices. A tiny green lizard scurries up the stalk of the Jerusalem thorn tree, oblivious to the prickly thorns.

You notice how neatly you pruned the wisteria and trumpet vines yesterday. You consider asking the gardener his opinion on vines, whether they are evolutionary curses of nature or providentially designed for some greater purpose that escapes logic. But the fragrance of the jasmine overwhelms your senses and logic seems misplaced in your botanical wonderland.

There is a bias in nature to the wild side, not the cultivated gardens. Weeds are a fact of life. They produce miniature gardens of many-colored flowers. Few notice them. Yet in microcosm, their flowers have transcendent beauty unmatched in urbane environments. They grow anywhere and require no effort to nurture. You even contemplate being a weed.

Your coffee cup is now empty. The sun is hot. Your morning meditation is over. You glance one last time toward the tool shed. The gardener has turned into a misty chimera, a ghost-like apparition that seems to be vanishing into thin air.

On the rail fence post sits a mockingbird. It practices a repertoire of mimics. Suddenly it’s startled, as though a strange breeze passed by. It ruffles its feathers and flies away.

You are once again alone in your garden. Through the magnolia trees you see a shadow. It resembles a cherub and moves slowly out of sight.

Life could be an invisible gardener who shows up unexpectedly to check on how we’re doing. He may show up today. Will the gardener smile at our creation and see that it is good? He loves gardens.


Bud Hearn
July 31, 2015