In the Garden at St. Dunstan's

We were talking in vestry about repairing and expanding our irrigation system. I have not been around long enough to know the real history, all of the emotions involved, but I think the prevailing question was: Is it good stewardship of the earth and money to water trees and plants that are non-native and therefore not self-sustainable? And certainly in a black and white scenario, the answer would be unequivocally “no.”

Of course, in a purely aesthetic sense, the thought of denying one plant or one tree the care it needs in such a beautiful and lovingly tended garden seems sacrilegious. Anybody who ever visited Emmaus House before Father Austin Ford retired knows what a spiritual experience a carefully tended garden can be. I still have a picture from my eldest son’s baptism, sitting on a hand-carved marble bench from India. I can still feel the coolness of the stone, the pungent odor of turned earth, wet from a good watering (not the way children do just spraying the surface). Almost 25 years later I asked a friend over there if the gardens were still as beautiful as I’d remembered them. No, he shook his head sadly, they haven’t been tended as they used to be. All this time later, it is not the tearful baptism with the bottle throwing, it’s the magical garden, like a work of art, that is the treasured memory of that day.

Anyway, the other evening around dusk, I happened to be in the neighborhood of St. Dunstan’s so I stopped by for a quick visit to the memorial garden. Just sit on the slate wall beneath the trees for a moment and unwind from the day. Take in the natural silence, bugs at work around the full fig tree, heavy with plump green fruit. Let my eyes wander and fall on a pale pink lily-looking thing trumpeting its rare blossom in the warm evening air. There are black-eyed susans, a butterfly bush.

I sit contemplating the work that so many have done. There are the new beech trees down the slope and some roses leading up to the memorial garden. Soon, I’m watching the ghosts of parishioners and clergy, in a procession with a cross and white robes and candles and bells, the Easter vigil. There are children laughing in the woods, and Joe is dressed as Moses, in full costume for a lesson on the Ten Commandments.

And I suppose all of those ghosts would parade around the grounds of St. Dunstan’s even if we didn’t have Peachy and Helen and Dorothy and so many others putting their heart and soul into the earth there. But how much richer we are and how fortunate it is for us that that isn’t so.