[Garden Memories: XXX]
I suppose I’ve spent the last 30 or so blog reflections remembering my childhood gardens because the memories themselves are containers; in them is a world of associations, connections, meaning, and clues to my existence.
In other words, remembering how my life intersected the natural world in those formative years, is an invocation of the building blocks of who I am. In every memory, I’m summoning up the blueprints of my childhood landscape so I can grasp the landscape of my soul. They are signs that point inside.
Michael Pollen said somewhere that “memories play around the edge of every garden,” and that has popped up in my mind from time to time. In approaching the gardens in our lives—the gardens of our current environment or the garden-like landscapes of our youth—we run into the formational influences of who we are.
I tend to think the Hebrews knew this deeply, for in that beautiful creation poem from the book of Genesis, humanity is charged with the holy responsibility of caring for the soil of Eden. Tending gardens is at once stewarding the land and stewarding the source of life.
We always remember our gardens because it’s in and from our gardens that we are made.
