Most of the bulbs I grow were harvested from flower beds planted by my grandmother over fifty years ago. I found them in this old garden, hidden in the woods just a few hundred yards from my back doorstep. Grandmother lived in a house that used to be nestled in these woods. The house is gone, but the bulbs and plants she cultivated there have continued to grow and multiply.
Entering this place I feel like Mary in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, stepping softly as if she were afraid of waking someone. This is a sacred space for me...a place where I dreamed childhood dreams and shared happy times with people I loved. It is a place that captured my imagination even when I was very young. I dreamed of living on this property when I grew up, of carving out my own nitch in the woods and planting gardens of my own.
Sometimes I forget that I am actually living my dream. Sometimes I think I might like to live someone else's dream. Really, though, this one is best for me. Here I have room to breathe and stretch and grow, just like the buds Mary unearthed in Burnett's garden.
So this week I am going to spend time cultivating the garden around my own home and in the process I know I will be renewed. Warm spring days have arrived and I am eager to feel connected to the earth with the sun on my back and the rich, damp soil in my hands. My spirit yawns and stretches as it wakes to this new season.
I hope this week you will do some maintenance in your own secret garden...that quiet place, whatever it is for you, where seeds of promise and hope were planted long ago. Pull a few weeds. Clear a little space. Give your dreams room to grow.
