Ice Time

Rosa rugosa 'Hunter'

Ice, what change thou has wrought on the landscape of Eden!  A night of frozen tears, a dawn of day, and earth seems shackled in a skin of glass.  Breath of North, a frozen gale has bowed brave 'Hunter' down, closing pistil and stamen against the will of the bloom.  It's suitors absent, huddled in their hives, the red flower now becomes a jewel, a ruby amidst thorns.  This glowing center of winter's garden pleases under ice but will fade at the next kiss of a warm breeze.

The view from my southern back window is lightened this morning, the garden itself somehow cleaner and calmed.  In contrast, the front, north-facing windows are opaque with ice, mere light without form in their distance.  Under the weight of solid water, the Sawtooth Oak on the left sighs and spreads, hoping to ease the burden of load.  

I worry for the trees, especially the proud but precarious Redbud to the west.  The favorite of Mrs. ProfessorRoush, a stiff wind could undo it in seconds, cracking it to kindling in a contest of will.  The existing gale already broke the resolve of the garden's photographer, sending him fleeing into the warmth of house, to the fire of hearth. 

There will be no further sticky-fingered tree frogs on my bottle tree, blue cobalt turned death trap for amphibian skin.  Summer is long past, and I pray that whatever moist skinned creatures survived the droughts of August have long burrowed into shelter.

'Carefree Beauty'

'Fru Dagmar Hastrup'

The orange hips of Carefree Beauty are preserved today, cased in glass, but will soon turn brown and shrivel.  So to, the relucent redder rugosa hip of 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup' will dim to dull.  Life in these hips has been stolen by the relentless ice, the seeds yet to spill upon the ground.

The cherub of the peony bed presides over all, calm and quiet, chaste and cool, reminding that this day was anticipated, nay expected, in the course of seasons.  The gardener heeds the stoic stone at last, slowing heartbeat, resting thoughts, reassured that the garden will survive again the orbit of years.

New Year's Cherubim Blessing

As a Christmas gift to myself, Mrs. ProfessorRoush had encouraged me to bring back a new garden statue from Indiana while I rented a moving van to retrieve items from the farm.  At first appearance, that may seem a long distance to go for a cement statue,  but just south of where I grew up is a large statue nursery, with great prices.  It is the site of the nude and voluptuous "Eve" that I wrote about in my Garden Musings book, and over the years we had shopped it on occasion, purchasing small items when the mood struck.  At Thanksgiving, the missus and I together had noticed this adorable cherub, and we were in agreement that it enhance the theme of my garden and provide a nice focal point.  And here it stands now in my garden, 700 miles and six weeks later.

The theme of my garden? I like to think of it as a reading garden, a quiet garden for contemplation and knowledge acquisition, combining my dual loves of the garden and the written word.  My ideal garden structure is not the construction of a simple greenhouse or potting shed, it is of a comfortable, cool, and well-lighted structure in which to read and write amidst of my garden.  Somewhere there, in that vision of personal paradise, I hope to spend my golden days, engaged in the quiet study and worship of life on this prairie. 

I knew enough to call my new statue a "cherub," and I thought the "shushing" gesture was cute, but I was really unaware just how well this particular little cherub would fit my garden. I had little previous knowledge of cherubs except that they are depicted as fat little infants with wings.  I was woefully ignorant of a vast amount of religious symbolism and myth, for cherubim are not simply angelic infants floating in heaven, they are the second of nine orders of celestial angels in Christian theology, the personal attendants of God who hold in themselves the special gift of wisdom.  This little stone angel with a finger to its lips fits my garden far better than I ever dreamed.

I've introduced you before to one of my other "reading garden" statues, my Aga Marsala, holding her book high among the roses.  But while writing this blog entry, to my shock, I realized I've never shown you the first of my readers, the angelic reading statue (pictured now at left) that was a birthday gift from Mrs. ProfessorRoush and her diminutive clone many years back.  Little they knew at the time that they were gifting me a garden theme and a focus for my days to come.  It is a little scary for an old man to realize how transparent he is to the females in his life.  An open garden book, perhaps?