The Garden of Eden
All of the religions that honor Abraham as their founder embody a version of the fabled garden that sits at the center of the ancient world where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow together in Mesopotamia. That area now has a very bad rap since it constitutes the entire country of Iraq and up into Syria and Southern Turkey. If the rampant warfare wasn’t enough, the forces of nature have conspired yet again to throw at the region an existential threat in the form of a deadly earthquake whose casualty list now approaches 50,000 deaths.
Last night I watched two movies in anticipation of our upcoming trip to Egypt and Jordan. One was Death on the Nile, the Hercules Poirot story that depicts a group of travelers on a Nile cruise down to Abu Simbel. Seeing the landscape of the Nile with its verdant creek shores bordered on both sides by fiery red and gold desert scape is both startling and very accurate as to what we will be seeing in a few days. The other was Queen of the Desert with Nichole Kidman, the story of the British art I ratio woman, Gertrude Bell, who wandered through the Bedouin lands between Tehran and Damascus and into the heart of the Arabian Peninsula. There she conspired with T.E. Lawrence (a.k.a Lawrence of Arabia) to help the Arab world straighten itself out and determine its own destiny. One scene that caught my attention when she was at the British Embassy in Tehran was that she remarked about how beautiful the gardens in that part of the world always ways smelled. It is true. There is something about gardens in that hostile part of the world, not unlike the sounds and smells of Northern India, that are so very pleasant and distinct. It reminded me that this was the seat of the Garden of Eden described in the Old Testament of Genesis and where man supposedly got his start. It is where innocence gave way to harsh reality. The garden is forever a place of tranquility and peace and in that way is unlike the real world in which we mostly have to live.
I do not expect to see many gardens in Petra or Wadi Rum, but I do hope and expect to find a few in Cairo and along the life-giving Nile River as we head south to Luxor, Aswan and perhaps Abu Simbel. I hope to capture that wonderful smell in my senses to remember what one of the things I like best about the Middle East. It is strange to me, but it is one of the regions of the world which is most interesting and most attractive to me, perhaps not to live in full time, but certainly to visit and enjoy. Like Lawrence and Gertrude (but hardly to their level of commitment), I am drawn to the deserts of the Middle East and have always enjoyed traveling there.
The word Eden comes from the Sumerian, one of the earliest languages of man. It means a fruitful and well-watered plain. It is no wonder that the other name for the Garden of Eden is the Terrestrial Paradise. The imagery of the garden means more to me than the story of original sin. The notion of a garden representing the divine life is important because it is so true. I was watching Lawrence of Arabia the other day and when T.E. Lawrence hit one of his down moments and said he was through with the desert and his military campaigns with the Arab army. When asked what he would do with his life, he said he would like to just move home to England and find a cottage and dedicate himself to gardening. And that seems to be what a lot of us choose to do in repose. We find our own slice of the Garden of Eden and tend our gardens.
This past week I was paid the greatest of compliments. A security service repairman came to replace a sensor in our security system. It was a bit of routine maintenance, no big deal. While he was here at the house he had to walk all through the place and had the opportunity to observe the gardens since they are so visible from inside the house. When he was finished he told me that we had a beautiful garden and I thanked him. He sensed that I felt he was making a minor polite observation. So, he felt it necessary for some reason to elaborate. He said that he services many of the nicest homes in San Diego. He said he deals with some of the most valuable properties in Del Mar, Rancho Santa Fe and La Jolla. He said that no property he has seen has as beautiful a garden, front and back as we have. I was pleased and shocked all at once. I had been told by Deborah Baldwin, the presumptive succulent queen of San Diego that we had the best succulent garden in the county, but to have that broadened to include all gardens was really surprising. Whether its true or not, it sure made me feel good and exceeded my expectations.
When I moved out here three years ago I had no idea that I would get into gardening. I knew we had a nice front garden planted by the previous owner, who loved succulents and cacti. I remember telling Kim that I had no intention of doing anything with the back hillside and that it was fine the way it was. My goal was just to do my best not to screw up what we had. And then one thing led to another and before I knew it, I was finding one project after another on all sides of the house to improve the garden. I started with the area between the house and garage or what we now call The Cecil Garden. It had been where we kept the the trash bins, but once the solar people installed the Tesla wall batteries, we realized that the area was too potentially nice to waste. Between the basalt column fountain, the new Strawberry Arbutus tree, the multiple bonsai plants and the stepping stones set in pea gravel, the project suddenly took on a life of its own. That led to completely clearing out the entire area around the other side of the garage and the back of the garage, which became the garden work area and new trash bin storage area. For most people that would have been enough of a project for a whole year, but no for me.
I then decided that the front artificial turf dog run we had put in for Cecil needed to be changed up. So I redesigned it to become a play area I called Moonstruck Madness. I replaced the turf with putting green surface and used the old turf on either side. I put in four mini-golf holes, a bocci ball court, one hole of disc golf, a cornhole and horseshoe course and a small soccer net. This was for the grandkids.
The area around the patio also had issues so I decided to replace all of the plantings around it. The only thing not changed was the Queensland Bottle Tree. I planted Bougainvillea, purple lantana and more bonsai on the small knoll north of the patio. I also planted some sage on the hillside going down from the spa, along with some stone steps to make the slope more tailored. I planted many succulents that didn’t take, but mostly everything else took shape well and now looks like its been in place a long while.
And then, once that was all done, I started in on the back hillside and the combination of plantings, boulder art, metal sculpture, benches, pathways (with steps), rock gardens, wind spinners, potted plants and, of course, the infamous Hobbit House with the sculpted boulder Boca de Verita face emblazoned on it.
Adam and Eve may have been placed in the Garden of Eden by God and there tested as to how he could deal with sin. Kim and I, on the other hand, have worked hard to create our own Garden of Eden and my sins are the sins of overindulgence. I am now anxious to find some gardens in the Middle East where I can get more ideas to even further improve our little Garden of Eden on the hillside.