Eau de Vie: chapter four

Jardin en ruine

Vie sat on the rock wall in her garden and wept. Her bees clumsily milled about looking for their favorite summer blooms, only to find bare, broken branches and a sprinkling of flower heads crushed into the dirt and manure. In frustration, many shot off beyond the confines of their normally protective garden to seek pollen and nectar elsewhere. Where exactly, they didn’t yet know. By some miracle, all of their hives were still standing.

The sun now showed in parts of the yard that had only yesterday been shady. And welcomed the sun was not, as the tender leaves and blossoms of maiden hair ferns, begonias, and hydrangea burned when exposed to the unfiltered rays. On all sides of the garden were the chaotic remains of the fence, some panels proudly standing, others knocked over, this way and that, wood slats punched through by hooves.

Delicious bulbs - irises, narcissus, agapanthus, and lilies – had been dug up and consumed, but only after all the foliage on each plant had been devoured. Where only months ago had been hundreds of blooms in whites, blues, and purples was an ugly jumble of trodden dead leaves mixed with old wood mulch, sharp sticks, and chunks of broken terra cotta pots which had held lush, fragrant herbs for the kitchen.

And then there were all the downed, bent, and decimated bits of garden art - metal sculpture, ceramic figures, ornaments, wind chimes on bishop’s hooks, and then the coup de grâce… Vie’s two commissioned abstract raku figures of a man and a woman - they were down for the count, each figure irreparably split in two. The tall, coppery figures now lay on the ground, hidden in the remains of the calla lilies. Oddly top-heavy, these silhouettes had always been out of sync with the garden’s whimsical, artsy vibe.

Had the cows stopped there, the damage would have been vast, but reparable. But on they went, eating their way through the tender branches on the Meyer lemon tree for as high as their thick heads could reach, ripping larger branches right from the trunk, which left the tree mortally wounded. It was hard to imagine bovines enjoying all that unripe citrus—how bitter it must have been.

The cows’ path of destruction then continued on to the trellises, whose vines had been laden with hundreds of purple and burgundy blooms the day before. Clematis tendrils had been yanked right off the latticework, then vines pulled up by their roots. Clearly, the cows found them unsavory, as after their violent disconnecting of the vines from moisture and nutrients, they were left dying in piles, uneaten, their life energy already melting back into the earth.

The flowering bushes - gone – the Japanese spirea, potentilla, and barberry were no more. The large patch of Spanish lavender and the rock wall draped in fragrant rosemary, which only days before had been full of tiny blossoms and populated with hundreds of honey bees – all were now a distant memory. How the cows had managed to consume both the plants and bees in one fell swoop was impressive. That was surely a spicy entrée, even for a cow.

The ornamental plum trees, the bougainvillea, and the camellias – the long-ago established foundational plantings on the perimeter of the garden – all had been chewed to bits, minus the trunks and the few remaining upper branches that were unreachable. Even the highly poisonous oleander and jasmine were stripped of their leaves and blossoms. No doubt someone had a tummy ache last evening.

The only bits of Vie’s beautiful garden left standing, with no perceivable damage, were the redwoods, the live and blue oaks, and the black walnut tree.

And splattered unscrupulously across patio tiles, stairs, and redwood decking were cow droppings. Volumes of them. The final touch.

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After much bellyaching and hurling insults at her husband, whom she blamed for the mess, in particular for his failure in mending the fences broken at the farthest reaches of the property (where the cows had found their way in), Vie finally settled herself down - sadly, only accomplishing this with help from a bottle of sauvignon blanc. The entire bottle.

Later in the day, and even after it became clear that the far fence had been downed by one of the trees ravaged in the fire – a recent situation unknown to Carl – no apology was issued. In the thick fog of drink, Vie thought very little of Carl’s shame and upset, drowning as she was in her own recurring nightmare of Fulda. The garden had triggered every bad memory of bombings, of neighborhood houses and gardens in ruins, of life turned upside down, of being a child and not being able to be a child.

With the garden now bare, Vie had nowhere to hide from her unrelenting fears and there was no longer the welcome and healing distraction of working in the soil - the soothing beauty and rhythm of her orderly flower beds, whose carefully orchestrated blooming cycles brought color to the yard every month of the year, keeping at bay apocalyptic memories and despair.

The flowers were gone, all that effort and care, years of it, ruined in one afternoon by a couple of hungry cows who had hidden their newborn calves in the oleander. There was a sweetness to the destruction, something about it was right and necessary – even through Vie’s tears, even in the ugly aftermath.

But the loss of her prized garden in the midst of summer’s glory caught Vie at her most vulnerable. Exposed and fragile, her terminal illness now fully revealed itself. No longer could she hide her total and utter exhaustion, the shortness of breath, and her racing heart. Gone was the beautiful distraction of the garden, which drew the attention of those she loved away from the pain etched on her face.

Once the bottle of sauvignon blanc had done its magic, Vie gratefully closed her eyes. As she drifted into semi-consciousness, she dreamt of going the way of the agapanthus, which would no longer be attracting the ruby-throated hummingbirds she loved watching from her bed on early summer mornings.

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