In my mind’s eye—somewhere on the outer edge of memory—I can still see the garden in all its pristine beauty, bright but fading at the edges, a photograph rather than the living scene.

What I’m seeing had to be a few years after I bought my cozy weekend cabin—in a clearing in the midst of a forest. The lower yard was little more than red Virginia clay speckled with red ant hills–a blank canvas waiting to come into focus. And I was determined to have some plants that would add a touch or two of civilization.

My neighbor, though, was amused by my vision:

“Only a city-slicker,” he quipped, “would move to the mountain and then decide to tame the wilderness.”

His ridicule didn’t bother me one whit. I kept my sights on turning the lower yard into a garden–something bold enough to make even the wilderness take notice.

I started with Paeonia lactiflora–the common garden peony, ironically crowned the King of the Flowers in eighth century China. It seemed perfect and impervious to ants. I triple dug curved beds in the midst of clay, lightened by little more than hope.

But what I’m seeing in my memory’s eye must be after those peonies that became the garden’s backbone were in place. Maybe, even, after I had incorporated into the landscape a triumphantly angled row of three Norwegian Spruce, their weeping branches cascading to the ground. It seemed to me that my mountain needed evergreens every bit as much as it needed civilization.

While that’s close, what I’m seeing must have been a few years later, still. The weeds and briars are gone, and in the very middle of the garden where an oak once stood is a totally civilized black pine, pruned into a cloud-like form, in Japanese niwaki-style, with a stone wall surrounding its stateliness.

And the entire garden is mulched o’er with crisp and clean pathways connecting mulched beds, edged with stones, suggesting order and intention. Even the trees are well-mannered—young and small and respectful—never daring to cast shade on the glamorous peony blooms below.

That vision was when it was new, and so was I, in more ways than the calendar would show. Helping me fulfill the grand design sketched in my head was Allen—my partner at the time and also an avid gardener. We worked together to turn that wild slope into something neighbors would praise as a “mountain oasis.” We hauled soil, set stones, and dug hole after hopeful hole, seeing nothing but promise in every shovel of dirt and imagining a garden that would last forever. It did. For a while. Allen had an artist’s patience, and, together, we believed we could hold beauty in place—keep it from slipping away.

I guess I believed that if I worked hard enough, beauty would freeze in place. I believed I had carved something permanent out of the slope. Something ideal. Something that would stay.

But here’s the truth. Time has a wicked sense of humor, and nature doesn’t do nostalgia. Its light keeps changing; the old scene grows dim, and new growth blocks the view you thought you’d always see.

As the years slipped by—teaching, conferences, a pandemic, Zoom, and Allen’s unexpected death—I realized that just as the seasons kept on turning, the garden kept going, too. The dogwoods shot skyward, spreading like ballroom skirts. The Weeping Spruce filled out and took up more space: “We live here now,” they said with every widening limb. And the weeds? They formed a governing council. They didn’t just visit. They settled in until the once-clear paths vanished from sight.

Every spring, Ruby and I would gaze down from the deck into the garden, and I’d make the very same promise, always aloud:

This year. This is the year I’ll restore it to my original vision.

Restore—it’s such a loaded word. It assumes the past was correct and the future is suspect.

Each year I’d march into the mess with gloves, tools, and determination, trying to resurrect a moment that existed only in my mind’s eye on the outer edge of yesteryear. But no matter how many briars I hacked back or weeds I shamed into submission, I could not get back there. Because there no longer existed.

Somewhere between one spring and the next, I realized the harder I tried to resurrect the past, the less alive it all seemed. And get this. The garden wasn’t asking to be restored. It had never asked to be restored. Instead, it was begging to be reimagined.

Reimagined. Imagine that.

I thought that insight would vanish by morning, but it didn’t. It lingered, like a seed waiting for rain. And sure enough, a few years later, when time seemed to have stopped, I found myself on the deck no longer alone with just Ruby, but now with Gary. We stood there, staring down at what had once been a garden and now looked suspiciously like wilderness—three slightly bewildered land barons trying to determine where the paths used to be.

I announced, with calm and certain confidence, that maybe the best plan was to clear almost everything except the evergreens that had stood their ground—cut it all back, seed grass, and mow it like a civilized lawn. Ruby, ever hopeful, wagged her approval. Gary nodded, already thinking his way silently through the logistics. We were so certain that grass was our destiny that we went ahead and bought a lawn mower—because when you’re unsure what to do, the obvious step is to buy machinery. And we already had a head start: the area below the old peony bed was grass-ish, though it had only ever known the loving snarl of a weedwhacker. We had already agreed that patch would become a smooth little lawn—with a small croquet court, because if we’re going to reinvent life when we’re 78, we might as well do it with wickets.

The next thing we knew, we were down and dirty, creating a free-form stone island in the middle of it all, moving the peonies there where the sun could find them again. So we grabbed gloves and energy—fall being the perfect time to transplant—and began laying stones without anything resembling a plan. What we did have was a revelation. The garden could never be what it once was. And even if it could, it needed a new vision.

When I stopped staring at the old picture in my mind, the living landscape came back into view. What needed restoring wasn’t the garden—it was my way of seeing.

The more I looked and the more Gary and I talked, the more I realized that my original vision wasn’t wrong. It was perfect for then. Yet what once made the garden beautiful cannot make it beautiful now. The land, like life, grows up and changes.

As soon as I accepted that reality, I began seeing the truth elsewhere in my life.

Take my body, for example—it’s demanding a new vision, too. My Fitbit still dutifully tracks every bell and whistle, but these days I’m more interested in a restorative night’s sleep and a decent HRV score. I once carried a vision of myself as a younger man, more muscle, thinner waist. Now I’m content to watch the numbers on the scale edge downward even a little and not have to suck it in quite so much when I button my pants. I used to set goals to prove something; now I set them simply to be a healthier me. Even the mirror reminds me that the younger man I still hope to see there has already faded from the frame.

And my love life? It needed the power of a new vision, too. For years I thought restoration was the aim—to recreate what once was. Now, I know otherwise. In this new season, Gary is beside me — patient, steady, and speaking with a modest, humble confidence that somehow makes even weed-pulling feel like hope. Together we’re designing a new garden and a new future without trying to photocopy our past lives.

Then there’s faith—perhaps the deepest shift of all. The God of my childhood was one cool dude who loved and accepted everybody, including gay guys, even if others didn’t always see His capacity for love. I’m amazed, though, at how He’s grown up, down through the years. These days, He gardens. He celebrates the wild mountain yeasts that make a potent sourdough starter—proof that transformation still rises from what’s alive. He lets life spill over boundaries. He shows me that when I put doctrines, certainties, and old visions aside, mysteries will magically razzle-dazzle me with their brilliance.

Maybe that’s the real work of life: learning to see with new vision, not old memory. When the past dims, the present comes into focus—and as the old hums behind us, it rides in the backseat—useful for perspective, not direction. What matters is the focus of the lens we hold today. To honor what has endured while daring to imagine what might be next. To let our roots deepen while our dreams stretch further.

This isn’t just about one garden, one man, or one patch of earth. The truth keeps repeating itself—in every life, in every heart still clinging to an old picture. And maybe—quietly, gently—we begin to ask ourselves:

● Where in life are we still trying to restore something that has already grown up?

● Where do we need to let go of how it was so we can finally see what it could become?

I’m still sitting with those questions, letting them settle like morning light—revealing what I need to see, one truth at a time.

The garden that once blossomed when I was younger has had its day, and what a day it was. But now, it hums with a new rhythm, a new vision—one taking shape right here, right now. It’s rooted in what has endured, but it’s alive with what’s possible: the life Gary, Ruby, and I are growing into, one season, one heartbeat, one sunrise at a time.

The view keeps changing. So do we. And thank heaven for that.