Leaving a garden

Every morning as I walk the dog I pass by my neighbors’ garden, which is beautiful. I think it took them a long time to get it to the place it is today, filled with beauty and grace and some whimsy. They’ve lived there more than 20 years, and I imagine they’ve been working on the garden for that long. It’s a gift to me, and to the neighborhood.

When I was young, my grandparents lived in Tacoma. The railroad tracks ran a few blocks away from their back yard, and when we spent the night there, we heard the trains go by in the early hours of the morning. They lived next door to a diner, and when we’d get off the plane and drive to their house, we’d stop for lunch there and get hamburgers and wild blackberry milkshakes. It was heaven.

My grandparents had gardens there, too: my grandmother grew roses and my grandfather had a vegetable garden. Tried as he did, he never could get me to like lima beans, but he’d delight us with funny-shaped carrots and new peas. Standing in the garden you could see Mt. Rainier in the distance, haughty and majestic and cold, such a contradiction from my grandparents’ sweet, small plots.