The Secret Garden

When I was young, my older sister, Rachel, read "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett to me at bedtime.  I recall with great fondness the vivid details of Mary Lennox exploring the secret garden at Misselthwaite Manor.  I still think of this book now and again as I work in my own garden.

Yesterday, while on a leisurely country drive with my husband, Jeremy,  we came upon a large pile of chopped up wood alongside the road.  We decided to grab some for use in our backyard fire pit.   I even convinced Jeremy to load in a really long forked branch so that I could bury it like a post out in the yard and attach various bird feeders to it.  What a guy!

While he was busy hauling wood to the trunk, I was busy snapping photos of a grove of pine trees nearby.  As I zoomed in to photograph the branches, I fixed my lens on a small opening between the branches.  It was then that I noticed a bunch of birds flitting around in a sunny clearing beyond the first row of trees.  As I studied the scene further, I realized that there was a small garden tucked behind the pines, almost completely hidden from sight and surrounded on all sides by the trees.  My camera had uncovered an actual secret garden!  How exciting!

Jeremy has been working for the past two years at enclosing our back yard in cedar fencing.  I designed it, he builds it.  I think I got the better end of that deal.  I like to imagine my backyard years into the future, now full of mature plants that block any sign of our neighbors' houses.  A secret garden of my own accessible only to me and those whom I invite inside.