The Someday Garden

Gardens change. They’re supposed to. There are seasons to it all. New eras, new flowers, new storms that threaten to uproot it all. That’s why I love them so much, because if a garden can change and still be beautiful, why can’t we?

For the next three hours we got ourselves lost in the beautiful manor and its wildflowers and mazelike hedges and native trees. The gardens were so serpentine that the world disappeared the moment you turned a corner. I couldn't tell you how the garden was laid out because it felt like between one step and another, you were always somewhere different. It constantly shifted from meadowy woodlands to pristine boxwoods to lattice walls of wild roses beside a bubbling brook that seemed to dip in and out of almost every scene like a well-known visitor.

What a glorious, golden thing to be alive.

Most mornings I get up to listen to the birds, and each summer I taste the honeysuckle, and I kiss Rus in the golden hours of dusk every chance I get. I kiss him in the mornings, too, and in the early afternoons, and in the gazebo of that someday garden, when we finally built it. I never heard Harriet’s voice again, and while the gardens spun strange stories for other people, Lilymoor’s magic politely passed us by. Then again, we didn’t need it anymore as we fell in love over and over and over again, season after season, in that someday garden on the cliffs by the sea.

I found you," I echoed. And suddenly he was pushing himself to sit up, sloughing off the vines that had crept around his limbs, golden-yellow petals falling away, and he brought me close, and kissed me like a man who had been wasting his life waiting for this moment. He tasted like honeysuckles, and I imagined that was how sunshine tasted, sweet and warm and comforting.

The garden, over the last month, had transformed into a beautiful oasis of flowers and clovers and soft willow boughs. It was perhaps beautiful at any part of the day, but Henry had been right to design it for sunset. The orange light of magic hour really made the magic. Equal parts shade and sunlight shifted across the flowers, native plants mingling in colorful bouquets. Large stalks of milkweed waved between rays of sunflowers, chicories grew in bursts of violet between Saint-John’s-wort, while hedge maids crawled across the ground between sprigs of wild mint and fireweed. There were summer lilacs basking in the sun beside black-eyed Susans, buttercups and yarrow and Queen Anne’s lace mingling like a colorful soiree, while goldenrod sprouted in the sunniest spots beside the forget-me-nots and bluebells. It was a kaleidoscope of colors and flowers, while tireless honeybees with little yellow trousers of pollen skirted from one bud to the next. Henry had a dream, and now, standing in Rus’s finished version, it was a good one. Eula would love it. “Rus?” I called, looking at the vibrant flowers and shrubs, the shade of the willow and the soft green of clovers. The far wall had finally bloomed with deep yellow honeysuckles, looking like molten gold spilling onto the grass.

Vines shifted around us, blooming in yellows and pinks, asters in white, daffodils and cosmos and black-eyed Susans. The garden beds overgrew, the vines twisted against root and wall, wisteria slithering down the ropes of the swing, blooming in purple.

And I would argue that to bloom a Mingus dahlia— because they're assholes that need perfect pH levels and sunlight and a prayer— is to Mingus a dahlia.

Camilla.” He held my hand against his cheek and bent his face into it, kissing the tender part of my wrist. “Buttercups. Orange blossoms.” Flowers for yearning, for charm, for something old and eternal— something that lasted. “Mistletoe,” I whispered, but what I meant was kiss me again.

His arms were strong, and his body was warm, smelling of lavender and honey and loose soil. As if he was made just for me, and how terrible that he was. “I’m glad it was you who walked through that door,” he whispered. “I’m glad it was you.

We couldn’t be more different

Now I miss something that doesn't really exist anymore." I watched the young girl pick up a flower on the pathway and stick it in her sister's hair. "There's a word for that— hiraeth.

He said he wanted to make a special garden for Eula— a golden-hour garden. That’s why it’s always sunset in here.” “And why I can only come here in the evenings,” I filled in, realizing. The term golden hour itched something in my brain— something Harrie once said, in all her romanticized stories. Golden hour was another name for magic hour, a time in folklore when the inexplicable was stronger. The precipice of day and evening. Like the old folktales of halfway places— shores where land and sea met and cliff sides where land and sky combined. Lilymoor had all of them— shore and cliffs, sea and land and sky.

As I sat under the boughs of the willows, the psithurism of the leaves in the wind was soothing and gentle, dampening my disappointment.

Tarradhin," I mumbled. "Hmm?" "It's Arabic, I think." I ran my thumb against the condensation of the Solo cup. "It means something like coming to a happy compromise. One where no one loses.

I brought the tiny purple flowers to my nose to smell. Their scent was soft and sweet, like jasmine and almonds combined. Lilacs were the language of old love. Syringa vulgaris, funnily enough.

Harrie collected untranslatable words, and I learned the language of flowers. Roses for devotion, pink carnations and rosemary for remembrance, bluebells for kindness, zinnias for absent friends, red chrysanthemums for love, poppies for consolation, aloe for grief, arborvitae tufts for a steadfast friendship… butterfly weed to let one go.

Hindsight was always sharp and bitter when you finally used it.

The best stories are the ones that fill you with wonder. The ones you almost believe.

Maybe, I thought, the garden keeps you because you’re golden hour made real.