Pedaling the Garden Walk

About two weeks ago, a week after my camping trip to MI with my boys, the unthinkable occurred: I was indulged by an all-family outing, by bike (!), that was unconnected to a larger vacation. Nothing more than a simple Saturday morning bike ride that took us about four miles from our home in Urbana, IL to four lovely homes and their gardens in Champaign, IL, Urbana's twin-sister.

Annually,a group of folks who love gardening and who formed a group called "Master Gardeners" invites the public to visit about eight beautiful gardens which all of them have tended cooperatively for a couple of years. My friend John, a master gardener himself, had given me two tickets and, in so doing, he had reminded me of this very special treat for gardeners.

I did not expect to receive a positive response from my family, and there was a lot of back and forth about it in the days and hours before. But in the end everyone was on a bike (or in the trailer--Gabriel), helmeted (Noah resisted until the very last second to wear one because it would interfere with his admittedly cool hair-do and ready to go. I admit that I bribed them somewhat with the possibility of "lots of stops on the way for soda, ice-cream and the like." And while this was a clear bribe it also was a way of coaxing myself into a slower, more relaxed, pedaling pace. It should be fun, I thought, to check out beautiful gardens, pedal to the next one, have a drink or something on the way and spend a whole Saturday morning in that way. And it was.

As a child and teen I resented working in my parents' garden. The only thing I could really bring myself to do was mowe the lawn. I did so conscientiously. But neither planting nor weeding nor harvesting were activites I particularly liked. I don't remember ever feeling what I feel now when I enter someone else's or even my own garden: a sense of an intense and acute spiritual presence. To be sure, I also feel this way when I am in an ungardened natural environment or, for that matter, when I walk through our local Meadowbrook Park (a prairie park that features natural areas in combination with statues and sculptures). So this is a sense not relegated alone to gardens. Rather, it is a theme that seems to bring me back to nature, but nature seen not alone through its own prism but also through the lens of human activity, like gardens and parks. For me entering these gardens, in other words, was like entering a church. It was better than entering a church.

Three fifths of my family did not quite see it that way. There was a lot of giggling and jesting about the gardeners, their work, and the most inappropriate thing one could do in such a space (actually, not at all unlike what, at one time or another, goes through most people's minds when they are in an actual church). I was annoyed at first, but calmed down quickly when I reminded myself that the the "goal" of this excursion had been to relax, not to be serious. And in a way, just by cycling out of our drive-way together, the goal had already been reached. Everything else was nothing but the icing on the cake. But we all get greedy sometimes, don't we?

We ended up seeing four gardens, ran into a few friends (one of them, Alison, the woman who did our family photo-shoot in 2008). And even a relatively serious accident that happened to our son Jacob on the way to the frozen yoghurt store didn't change the mood. His front-tire had gotten stuck in the rungs of a rain-sewer lid (do city engineers realize what a hazard these things are when they're not put in properly, i.e., perpendicular to traffic flow?). He had lost his balance slipped of his pedal and scraped his calf on the crank and arm on the handle-bar. The front-tire blew as well. Fortunately I had my patch-kit on me and we continued after only a short few minutes (which my wife used to check out a few books from the Champaign Public Library, which is were the accident happened). The hole in the tire was big and the patch didn't hold up very well. We had to stop and pump a few times, but, in the end made it to the Frozen Yoghurt place and, afterwards, a bike-store where we picked up a new tube.

On the way home my wife said she wanted to do something like this again. Especially with a clear sense of destination, she thought, it was much easier to be on a trip like this. I agree. Noah, Jacob and Gabriel chimed in, in their own ways. We all were helped, I think by the admiring comments of some who saw us pull up to the next garden. One woman had seen us right after we had taken off from home. She voiced her surprise about how "far" we had cycled. I hope we'll do this again soon. I hope, too, that something about gardens, cycling, and family was passed on to my sons on this day. The sweetness of this kind of togetherness, disconnected from daily routines, but disconnected especially also from our gadgets and often very one-sided and isolated activities, that sweetness lasts for me and it was, I believe, a balm for all five of us.