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Our youngest daughter was three years old when I took my favorite picture of her. Jolee was crouched down with a beautiful pink dress and matching pink ribbon, accenting her long golden curls. She had her lips parted slightly as she was clutching a single white dandelion; lifting close, as she examined this precious find, her expression was one of bewilderment as her soft breath caused the seeds to float freely into the air. In the background was a boulder, gray with a shade of light pink. Next to the boulder was an extraordinarily large lavender bush, giving forth a water color to a masterpiece, as if Eden were being restored. Through the redwood picket fence behind the backdrop of large rocks grew a deep green grass, embracing the rest of the picture perfectly. That picture captured the memory of my eyes and mind, my spirit, and my heart.

I use that picture as wallpaper on my computer desktop. The digital image is not an illusion, but a vibrant reminder of a place in time. My wife and I used all the creative love we had to prepare what would unknowingly become our portrait which we rightfully named "Garden Innocence". We didn't have money to spend on a garden, so we used what we had available around our, now vintage, dairy farm.
The picket fence and gate we found curbside in town one day. We took it home and painted it the same color red as the barn and the old chicken coop that was to embrace our new garden. Since this farm was where my wife had grown up, she had accumulated many rocks, boulders and stones from the fields surrounding us. We carefully placed each stone where the garden seemed to agree. We planted many flowers, plants and even some ferns that were favorites of my wife's mother, who died of cancer 27 years ago. There was a grape vine in the southwest corner that my wife's father planted when they first moved to the farm, and on the north side of the coop were long beds of strawberries, also planted by her father. I made a small pond at the gate entrance, and bought a couple dozen feeder goldfish to bring it to life. We gathered in the garden to reflect some very emotional moments over the years. We had cookouts, and evenings spent in summer solitude. We watched for the bats to come out of the barn at dusk, and the dawn doves gently cooing from this garden of peace.
Our garden taught us many aspects of love and serenity; it also taught us the difficulty of letting go.
Last fall we had to make a choice to move to another house. My wife's father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. We found all the years at the farm coming to closure. My wife lost her brother to an accident. Her mother died at home there. Her sister married and moved away. The garden was filled with the tears of many difficult times in life, yet the garden seemed eternally emphatic.
We are now nurturing "Dad" along at our new home, three counties away. It's awesome, how when God closes one door, He opens another. We are now nestled in surrounding blue spruce. I transferred the old pond to the new location in the back yard. The Garden of Eden has already shown her glory this past spring. It is August now, the new goldfish are surviving, and the very ferns that my wife's mother planted years ago are flourishing in their new surroundings. Jolee is eight years old now, she just headed out toward our new garden, I think I am going to go locate that camera.

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