The things i have been thinking about for this blog are the Tradescantia and how they all are doing so well and the Grandprize Hosta, and blue cups covered with tanglefoot for deerfly control, but tonight we watched "A Secret Garden" which is based on Henry James (almost every thing is based on Henry James, even Greece and China, though they predated him so didn't know it--and, yes, I have to admit, I have laughed out loud at Henry James, which would seem impossible, unless one grew up in a house of just nine rooms, yet contained all of the British Isles, though favored the north, as well as a good smattering of the London Stage, and gave strong support to the American Revolution, Tories though we were) so now what I have to say is less about the plants themselves than the fact that, if each of us were to design our garden of Eden, then there would be 6-billion-plus gardens. And also, children's gardens have more paths that lead to and from than grownup gardens, for children, as a rule, are eager to see who will come to visit, and adults are scared to see... who will visit.

Though the world would be a better place, if each of us were allowed to build the gardens of our innocence (for I should say "innocence" rather than "youth" for so many have their youth robbed from them), with doors and dreams wide open.

Twice in the last two weeks I have been asked at the garden center when I first became interested in plants and the first time I said, "I have never known a time when I wasn't interested in plants," and the second time I simply said, "Before I learned to talk." In my garden of Eden, my grandfather would be standing by his climbing beans with my grandmother smilingly beside. And my Granddad's iris would be in bloom with my Grammy nearby, playing the piano. And my father would be amist his rhododendrons, flowering all, and my mother would kneeling by, and planting the marigolds I bought her, at the Flower Market, on Mother's Day, my birthday, with the money she had given me for cotton candy and a ride, and I, being a pudgy sort of kid, would have gotten the cotton candy, but skipped the ride, and spent my time with crystalizing pink candy sharp on my tongue, wandering all around the tables of the great big tent, where the flower market got its name, long before I was born.

In my garden no child would lose their innocence, before they learned to talk.

I have spent my adult life classifying that which is undefinable. In the end no tale is truely epic, unless it ends with magic. For the only part of who we are that gravity cannot pull back to earth is our imagination. There are no deer flies in our garden, sitting with the catalogs, by a January fire. Which is a mish-mash. Which is why the gray-haired woman purchasing the half-priced herb pot that has gone to seed, is as real, and as important to me, as the laced couple short on time, spending hundreds, even thousands, on plants they'll never see.

If we were all blessed equally, then each of us would have a secret grden, that would give us friends who'd show us paths we'd learned how not to see, and help us walk on legs we'd learned how not to trust, and bring our family home to us, or show us how to get from here to them, whoever they may be.