The Common Garden

Welcome to the Common Garden, where we gather around a table to share and discuss your comments, thoughts, and contributions to our blog. Come and join us as we build a warm community, away from the noise and rush of the modern internet.

 

Give me just a moment to bring out the cookies Mary baked... There we are, everything is ready. We have our tea, our water, our coffee, and whatever else you have brought along. I hope we are ready to listen to all the beautiful and unique things you shared with us this week. 

We are enjoying a warm June day at around 27°C (81°F) beneath mostly clear skies. A gentle breeze drifts through the garden, the humidity sits near 60%, and the sun will not set until around 8:58 PM. Above us, the moon is beginning a new cycle, quietly returning to the evening sky.

Let us begin with Duni, who gives us the same feeling we have about weekends:

"I've always liked the slower pace of weekends."

In a special way, weekends seem to have the magic of moving a little more slowly. I do not know if it is because many people are not working on those days, but even when I had to work on Saturdays or Sundays, I always felt that time passed a little more slowly. And automatically, those two days became my favorites. Do you also have that feeling of a gentle melancholy on Sundays, especially when there are a few clouds in the sky? Is it not a rather special day?

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Karen reminds us that somewhere inside us there is still a spark of the child we once were, and the joy that summer is a carefree season. Somehow, that feeling stays within us and never truly disappears.

"I was just happy when summer came and I didn't have to go to school!"

There was no better season for me than summer, mainly because I was the kind of child who spent more days playing basketball with my team than studying. Or in the afternoons I would play football in the schoolyard for endless hours. And of course, when I got home, let us just say that things were not always so welcoming, since I had not spent much time preparing for school, and my parents were quick to remind me of that.

It was a period that felt a little like adulthood, a time when you were free to do the things you wanted, see new places, go to the sea or the mountains, and even experience new romances. How could you not be happy? Honestly, who remembers grammar lessons or physics? Yet I remember every summer, the children I met, and (sorry Mary, but I was very young back then, it was many years ago, please forgive me) the childhood crushes I met during holidays. They were innocent and platonic... but not as real as the one I found with Mary.

And just as I am thinking about the unusual teachers we had, who mostly shouted because I could not learn my vowels, although I eventually learned them thanks to all that shouting, Granny Marigold offers us a very different perspective on teachers.

"Most of my teachers were nuns and they were so good to us. It was like we were their children."

Honestly, I would love to learn more about that school. Was it part of a monastery? Was it a different kind of school altogether? Even for someone like me, who was not exactly known for studying very hard, it would have been a fascinating experience to have nuns as teachers. Their calm presence alone would have given me a completely different view of school.

I would have loved to hear them talk not only about lessons, but about life as well. I sincerely hope they would have had plenty of patience with me, because I loved talking in class about completely unrelated subjects. Hopefully I would not have made them change careers. I hope they would have forgiven me.

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Suddenly, the conversation turns toward family. In that magical way conversations often do, where the subject changes without anyone really noticing. And I think we should feel grateful that Linda opens her heart to us at this humble little table and shares something so personal from her life.

"Yes, it is wonderful to have family. I will be 70 in October. I am an only child, my mother lost 5 children before I was born. So now I am grateful to have my cousins."

Life brings so many changes, most of them unexpected, and very often you are simply a spectator. You do not control any of it. And yet, human strength and determination are so remarkable that people manage to move forward, to flourish, to build families, and to find people who can gently fill whatever empty spaces may remain. Your trust honors us, Linda, and you are an example to all of us.

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And since we remain on the subject of family, Debbie and Anette are the kind of mothers, aunts, and cousins we all wish we had around us, for their open-minded and free way of thinking, for their forward-thinking spirit, and at the same time for the respect they show to others.

I've tried to maintain healthy boundaries and respect for their time as a young family, but also invest much time into my grandchildren.

Love, support and communication are important, but so is allowing each generation the freedom to build its own life and traditions  

The gap between generations grows whenever understanding is missing. And in a way, it is beautiful that those differences exist, because every generation has something unique to offer to life. So perhaps the goal is not to eliminate the gap, but to build a bridge across it. And Debbie and Anette give us the answer: healthy boundaries, time, love, support, and communication.

The sound of birds accompanies our conversations throughout the lush green garden. I know absolutely nothing about birds, species, and all those details, but I do know how to recognise sounds that calm my soul. And these are truly wonderful sounds. Since they came so close to us, perhaps there was something they wanted to overhear, something that caught their interest. Maybe they somehow knew us from long ago... who knows.

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Today, we are in no hurry to leave. After our last gathering, I grew tired of washing all the dishes immediately afterward, so today we are simply staying here in the Common Garden, without any expectation of conversation, without any demands, simply drinking our beverages and enjoying our cookies... Ah, there goes my neighbor, he has started cutting the grass... that's country life for you...

Around the table this week: Duni • Karen • Granny Marigold • Linda's Relaxing Lair • Debbie • Anette