One of my favorite movies is the Secret Garden.  I like both versions but it is the Warner Brother’s version that has the haunting line above.

You can watch the scene here:  The Secret Garden

NOTE:  It is a ten minute clip and I found out that, if you like, you can slide the bar up to minute nine and bypass all but the scene I mention .

I used to have a secret garden when I lived in Claremont, California.  I used to invite people to come into the back and it was always fun to listen to them audibly take in air when they saw it for the first time!

Now I am in another place, this garden is left behind and in the loving care of new owners who appreciate the hard work that went into my little secret garden.  I am carving out another garden where none existed when I got here.  It will be one of a different sort.  This one is for self sufficiency.  It is our vegetable garden.  It is a bit rough around the edges, but all things that are worthy and good take time.

There are, or soon will be peppers, corn, squash, tomatoes, beans, cantaloupe potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and more.  The soil will be worked, and amended with all the compost I can make from kitchen scraps, and the henhouse straw.  Also cared for is my little orchard of apples, figs, muscadines, and blueberries.  I tend them in their infancy and they will feed me even when I am old.

That is a comforting thought… and that keeps me at it every day.  I look at my pictures from yesterday and far away in California and I get sad for what I left behind.  Then I think about all that I have here, and what I will grow tomorrow and I smile and thank God for the gift he has entrusted into my care… my “…bit of earth.”