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This is the first time an Angelkeep Journals column has carried the same title as a book. It is not an infringement because titles cannot be copyrighted and it is not an endorsement…exactly. The book by Jason F. Wright was recently read and enjoyed but was more significant for inspiring personal thinking and reminiscing. It was the ‘gardener’ word in the title that encouraged me to obtain a copy. It sounded like a good title for February reading, like the Burpee Seed Catalog or the rose company catalog we receive after having rose bush gifts sent to us by a Florida friend, Judi.
The book is about the life of a boy literally born amid the wreckage of a car accident alongside a highway. The mother died. Eventual adoption came for that boy, with a home on an apple orchard farm. Although the book’s main plot is not about growing apples, the descriptions included in the story sent me inspecting Angelkeep’s wee apple orchard for signs of early spring life.
Angelkeep’s apple trees began with four plantings. Deer prune naturally on the lower part of the trees. One tree did not survive a harsh winter, not from severe weather exposure but from starving deer that completely ate the young tree down to within a foot of the roots. The trio of remaining trees in what Angelkeep calls the orchard are healthy, never sprayed, and serve only for beautiful blossoms in spring, buggy apple food for deer in autumn, and trunk twig fodder in winter. Grandkids also like to pick apples and throw them into Angelpond to hear the loud splash.
God has seen fit to provide additional crabapple trees in more locations around the pond. Both man planted and God-bestowed trees hum with bees in spring, a needed activity to provide the fruit for later animal use. Upon the last February cold day investigation, buds were yet struggling to provide a sign of any apple tree return to life at Angelkeep.
John, the protagonist from the book, grew up, married, inherited the orchard, and tragically lost his wife and unborn second child in another highway accident. He planted two white highway crosses. In his season of grief, John tended those crosses. Another mysterious man, assisted. This man, known as Cross Gardener, considered it his mission to tend and mend memorial crosses along the roads. The relationship between John and the unknown man is the primary purpose of the story. It is about changing lives, grief, and moving on in this world after the loss of loved ones.
Angelkeep has more than one memorial “cross” but they live in the form of plants. The first was a plant bought with donated funds from Dad’s passing. It was planted before Angelkeep had a name. The latest memorial is actually a line of corkscrew willow on the South side of Angelpond. They were starts from sticks in a bouquet for Gwen’s mother’s February funeral just a year ago. The sticks rooted and leafed out while in a vase holding blown-out decorated Easter eggs. February is too early to determine how many survived the past winter. They will be weeded and tended like the crosses in The Cross Gardener once the weather breaks and weeds begin to flourish.
Nature at Angelkeep is on the threshold of renewing the life-after-death surge which always occurs in such abundance. Birds are already searching out ideal nest locations. Daylily sprouts are just about to break the soil surface. Will February beat last year’s March 6 first-sighting of a honeybee? On the last day of February, who will be more prolific, Ms Crocus or Mr. Dandelion? Bunnies are already out and about, but no sign yet of our resident mink.
The Cross Gardener ends well, with John and daughter healing from separate seasons of grief. Grief is an illness. John, with his surviving daughter, begins to bloom anew. The apple orchard of Wright’s story will come back to life just as Angelkeep apple trees, man’s and God’s, are budding signs of newness, of hope, of renewal, of moving on into a warm and glorious season of resurrection.
It is a cycle that every gardener understands. Vegetable gardeners. Flower gardeners. Orchard gardeners. Farmers. Sowers and weeders and reapers of all kinds…even The Cross Gardener.
by ALAN DAUGHERTYRead this story in our E-Edition, Click Here
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