On these precious fragments, I have planted a stony garden*

a brief understanding of beauty for a tired brain

The roses scented like orange.

I did not expect to walk from the borrowed London flat of a friend between Westminster and Pimlico, and find myself in tears with my face buried in a rose cascading over the wrought iron fence separating a local churchyard from a busy urban corner.

It was Susan who found it first, while we were waiting to cross the street on our way out for breakfast; the wind gusted in just the right direction and we stood there, staring at each other. The rose smelled of orange — actually, oranges, plural — of the sort I’ve only ever tasted in Turkey, years ago, in that kind of cataclysmic olfactory moment that leaves your mouth watering. I was wearing sunglasses, so Susan couldn’t see me tearing up; I attributed it to exhaustion, jet-lag, the overwhelming visceral stress of being a caregiver for a perpetually angry elderly parent who has finally made her overt displeasure at the fact of me known, after sixty-one — soon to be sixty-two — years. Maybe it was that; maybe I was just tired. Maybe there has just been too much ugliness, too much fury in the world; maybe the roses offered me a respite, as if they were saying enough already.

The problem with London — if it’s a problem — is that this kind of beauty is everywhere, amidst the tourists clogging Westminster and Soho, the traffic (which seems as bad as it is in New York), the multi-chimneyed rooftops, the trash bins, the noise in the busier parts of town. It would be one thing if this sort of beauty was intentional — if someone said I know, let’s plant these roses here so that in thirty years, they’ll cascade over this nine-foot fence and catch the attention of two depressed American women waiting to cross the street and remembering to look in the right direction so they don’t get hit by a taxi. I don’t think it was by design, although I could be wrong. I think London — Britain on the whole — does dramatic beauty nonchalantly, and even my friends from more urban places like Birmingham and Manchester, and the ones who were raised in council flats, would agree with me. But for now, I’m moving slowly, and while it seems ridiculous to say I’m stopping to notice all the beauty I can find in a more purposeful way: I am.

This trip is Susan’s second sabbatical in the twenty years she’s worked at her wonderful company, that recognizes the need for one to step back, step away, do something different for a month. But ten years ago, during her first sabbatical, we also came here, to England, after a week in Paris. I was incredibly ill for much of it — a Chelsea physician threatened to put me on a no-fly list if I didn’t get better by the time we needed to go home. When we decided to return to England, where we have dear friends (one of whom I have known for fifty years), I didn’t intend for it to be a garden-focused trip, but it has turned out that way. There is the informality of the city walk: the stroll to the tube that takes you past a small Catholic church somehow affiliated with Westminster Abbey and stops you dead in your tracks and makes you cry at the smell of roses you’ll never know the name of and search for the rest of your life. And then there is the formality of the planned garden visits: Chelsea Physic Garden, Sissinghurst, Great Dixter, and any number of smaller gardens we may find ourselves in or near during our three weeks here.

We left our borrowed flat early this morning and went straight to the Chelsea Physic Garden, passing the Pensioner’s Hospital and the site of the Chelsea Flower Show along the way. We showed our tickets and stepped out into the garden, and I might have gasped; I love English walled gardens — the explosion of color and texture and height and scent makes me a little crazy — and this was, please pardon me, pure English garden porn. Again: sunglasses, turning my back to other visitors so they didn’t think they were in the presence of a lunatic. We did the thing that one does — we took a short tour — and heard the stories of the garden, how it came to be, the historical and biological significance of botanicals and how, unsurprisingly, many of them were introduced to (for lack of a better way to put it) “explorers” by indigenous women who had been using them for eons for everything from healing to treating to dyeing. But before the tour, we walked along the paths through the various gardens and I could not believe my eyes. I know this sounds ridiculous and trite and sophomoric, and honestly, I don’t care.

We’re hearing news from home everywhere — in Ubers, black cabs, on line, in local newspapers — and it has been interesting/depressing/emotionally catastrophic to truly understand how the world rightly sees us: in the grips of such raging ugliness that it seems inconceivable (although I maintain that when someone tells you who they are, believe them). This combined with the fact of my status as a caregiver for an abusive parent, which at worst has rendered me unable to form words and at best shuddering, has left me questioning the very possibility of beauty and peace as being real, or a manifestation of human interference and force. But it occurred to me today, standing somewhere between The Garden of Medicinal Plants and The Garden of Edible and Useful Plants, that I was suddenly thinking about beauty and nature in a manner that could be considered mildly Blake-ian. It seemed to me, by the time we left the garden, that the botanical world is innately intelligent: it knows what to do for itself, for the earth, and for we humans, who are determined to change it, destroy it, or package it for a profit.

It was here long before we were, and it will be here long after we are dust.

*From Derek Jarman’s Pharmacopoeia

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Note: I will be trying to post here at least once a week while we’re away, although for a few days we’ll be in rural Scotland so I have no sense of how the WiFi situation is going to play out up there. I suspect that there will be much to say, as the gardens we’ll be seeing in Kent and Sussex will likely result in a clicking-into-place of world view, like the glass shards in a kaleidoscope. Also, I am writing this on a souped-up iPad and attached keyboard, which is not at all like writing on my laptop: hyperlinking, video placement, photo size are all a wash, so please forgive me in advance. I will make it up to you.