On Visiting Bloedel Reserve

If you have a garden and a library you have everthing you need.–Cicero

I’ve been doing a lot of walking in the Seattle area these past several days, while visiting my daughter and family. As a gardener back home in Kentucky, it’s nice to see what cool temperatures and ample moisture can do for making verdant landscapes and, maybe more to the point, motivating green thumbs to spend time outside, free of humidity, high temperatures and, of course, mosquitoes.

Case in point was yesterday’s day long excursion to Bainbridge Island via one of Seattle’s ubiquitous ferries that add to the area’s delights. There we took in the 150 acre Bloedel Reserve with its rich tapestry of Douglas fir forest intersected by well-kept trails, rhododendron and tea garden displays, reflecting pool and sea vistas.

As the Irish poet Yeats might say, “peace comes dropping slow” in a place like this.

I confess to being a Romantic unashamedly, though tempered sufficiently with realism to know nature’s moods. Unfailingly, gardens possess a spirituality for me, moving me out of myself into an awareness of connection with universal rhythms of genesis, maturation, and ending. I am but a leaf of the tree of life. Beauty lies here in the now, not in a speculative destiny.

…there, all days, my heart goes
Because there, first, my heart began to know
The glories of the summer and the snow,
The loveliest of harvest and of spring.  _Edith Nesbit

–rj

Author: RJ

Retired English prof (Ph. D., UNC), who likes to garden, blog, pursue languages (especially Spanish) and to share in serious discussion on vital issues such as global warming, the role of government, energy alternatives, etc. Am a vegan and, yes, a tree hugger enthusiastically. If you write me, I'll answer. View all posts by RJ