Jacob's Garden

This Sunday morning, I walked, armed with leaf rake, clippers and white, transparent plastic bag into the back of my garden, and the older I get, this luscious place is getting bigger every time I have intentions of working on it. I walked all the way to the back and started trimming the brick paths, “miles” of them. After finishing a portion, I gathered the leaves. I was industrious, and didn’t spend time on having profound thoughts.

The first hour was slowly coming to a close and the perspiration started to accumulate at the familiar places. My knees started to hurt and my lower back signaled that “enough is enough!” I took the hint, closed the half filled plastic bag, gathered my tools and headed on “home”!

While I walked back, I looked around and realized for the umpteenth time that this place is very close to Heaven - in more ways than one. Ground ivy as the predominant ground cover, bushes ( I can’t tell you their names), wild, subtly smelling red roses, hundreds of young Hickory Tree shoots and others, plenty of weeds (I trim these, if they start to take over). Weaving through this place, I call Jacob’s Garden are brick and pine needle covered paths. The bricks, 2300 of them, were recovered from a torn down downtown office building many years ago. In the very back is the jewel of this paradise: a green shed with a relatively new roof, but otherwise undisturbed for the passed 20 years. It leans slightly to the left. The doors are kind of crooked, but they open easily and inside are tools mostly belonging to my friend Walter and card board boxes with books my son Jaap left with me many months ago. The ground has never been covered and still has the familiar reddish color.

This place doesn’t require power mowers - there is no lawn to work on. Over the almost 20 years I have enjoyed this space, it has never been watered with a hose or bucket, and the one giant red oak tree right at my back window of my house, has been fertilized only once. So, this can be labeled: a low maintenance and little energy consuming garden.

A voice somewhere tells me:

“Enjoy me the way I am. Pay attention. Work with me, but don’t try to change me ... much! Look at me. From time to time, come see me! Although you look and see, the world unseen within me is huge. So, don’t pretend that you understand me!”

Kind of who I am!