Gardens and Love

A couple of weeks ago I took a staycation here in Austin. I wanted to experience the city the way I would if I were a tourist so my plan was to try new things and visit new places. High on the list of places to go was Umlauf Sculpture Garden and I’m so glad to have made it a priority. It truly is a magical place and I highly recommend visiting if you haven’t.

Gazing around at the different sculptures, I found myself drawn to the ones I picture in this post: the beautiful form of a woman forever held in a state of what looks to be freedom, delight, and ecstasy, a young boy lost in the pleasure of youth – his only concern being excitement about bounding into a lake, and two couples forever entwined in each other’s passionate embrace. It got me thinking about what inspired the artists to sculpt these particular moments, emotions, and individuals. It made me think about the depth of the love and gratefulness for these relationships these artists must have had or observed in others and in turn, what a beautiful way to celebrate and leave behind for the world to have forever.

I have zero green thumb ability (see previous post for a funny story on this) but make it a priority to visit gardens when traveling anywhere new. I periodically visit the Botanical Gardens here in Austin so I can see what new things are blooming. There is something delightfully romantic about meandering along dirt paths that are strewn with bright colors, big trees, sunshine, birds chirping, and butterflies flitting about that makes my heart feel full.  I am also reminded of a story about a garden I once heard: of a man and wife who loved each other dearly. The wife adored beautiful flowers and so her husband created an exquisite garden for her – with little streams, rose bushes, ivies, and many other beautiful plants.  When she passed, he continued tending to the garden as an expression of his love to her. From my understanding this was about 50-100 years ago and the garden is now a part of the city and continues to flourish. I find that to be such a wonderful expression of love – the symbolism of the beauty of nature, the continual growth, change and even death that this garden goes through. Just as relationships grow, change and have different areas flourish at different times, at some point things will end. At some point no one is around with memories to talk about the beauty that existed. This garden will forever sing about their love and there is something that seems so right about that.

Maybe that’s part of why I appreciate art so much. Books, music, paintings, photography, sculptures, buildings…they all have a story. Sometimes we know it and sometimes we don’t. I love the story and I love that it lasts.

And I think about these things in my day-to-day life. We can’t all create a magnificent garden for someone but we can create a dynamic that is worthy of celebration.

While gardens and art and things that can be left behind are beautiful reminders that I will forever enjoy, in the end it’s still just a symbol. When I think about the people I associate love with, it’s the twinkle in their eye, the smile that uncontrollably pops onto their face, the spontaneous feeling-full hugs, the gentleness of their presence that without words says, I’m here for you. I know that eventually life as I know it and relationships as I know it will end, but I believe those other things somehow live on. And that is why visiting gardens makes me so happy. Gardens remind me that today matters both because we all have a last day and because what we do today has the possibility to grow into something incredibly beautiful. While the beauty we plant today might not be seen through the original gardener, the love we strew about the world can grow bigger and bigger. That’s pretty powerful.