Thom's Garden

Abstract

O n the last day of summer I loaded my car with large tubs and gardening tools. During the drive I recalled that I hadn't been to Thorn's garden since April. At that time the daffodils and hyacinths were in bloom and tulips were just beginning to bud. Thorn was sitting in the dirt pruning and fertilizing rosebushes. He could no longer kneel or get up and down easily-he just scooched on his behind from bush to bush. Thorn's garden was quirky-he had never liked formulas or regulations. When someone told him that small plants should go in front of larger ones or that plants of the same variety should be massed together for effect, he'd scoff, "Who made that rule?"He had created a fantasy world in that garden. Winding paths led to surprises-lavender bush roses climbing over an old rusting shed, fragments of statues half-buried by chickweed, and clematis weaving a crazy quilt on a single trellis. There was a small pond bordered by decking on one side, the opposite bank lush with ferns and astilbes and iris. He had found a hollow log and this became the waterfall.The first time I visited Thorn's home the previous year I was enchanted. He lived in what was no more than a migrant worker's shack. The glass in the sliding door was cracked and protected by plastic sheeting, his homemade murphy bed left little space in the single room that served as parlor, bedroom and kitchen, and the bathroom lacked the one luxury he coveted-a bathtub. But through the glass door! Sunlight and space and riotous colors: luminous red competed with purple and chartreuse, golden yellow contrasted with burgundy, clear cobalt blue muted burning orange. The air was a medley of odors: phlox, lavender, cleome, manure drying in the sun and the calls of grackles, robins, and mockingbirds blended in the breeze. Textures: soft grey velvet lambs' ears nestled beneath heavily horned old roses; silver lace vines festooned rugged native cedar and everywhere lilies poked up amidst wild strawberries and jimsonweed. Thorn didn't discriminate among flowers-wild goldenrod and chicory were as prized as his antique roses and Dutch bulbs.Thorn first came to see me because I was a Buddhist chaplain and he felt I might understand some dreams and visions he had had. He was worried that he might be "crazy" to have experienced them. Most took place while he sat in his garden. He told me that one day when he was sitting with his legs on a stool, enjoying the birds, he felt the wind rush in through the soles of his feet and blow his entire being our of his body. He felt cleaned out and light and free and then was filled with immeasurable joy. "Am I crazy?" he asked. And I replied that I wished I were that crazy.After that Thorn began to change. He had been arrogant, sarcastic with a cutting tongue and isolated. Some of these defenses remained, but now the