Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
Welcome to the second Odd Company of May, 2025, in which I muse on the Milky Way, English country gardens, and the illusion of control.
But why the Milky Way? To be honest, because I love the Milky Way. It is literally one of the lights of my life. When I sit down to meditate in the hope of finding a few moments of peace, I picture a warm, very dark night; a field of grass with fireflies; and above our heads (mine and the fireflies’), rising like a necklace of jewels, the Milky Way. The desire for peace, both inner and outer, seems rampant just now. As fate would have it, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere are currently in the seasonal sweet spot for best views of the awe-inspiring, peace-inducing edge of our galaxy. At this point in human history, most of us live in places where the Milky Way is never visible, or is very difficult to make out, due to light pollution. But if you can find a dark place, go for it! May 26 is the night of the new moon, when the sky will be darkest, so pick a night sometime around that date. Go away, away, away from the cities and the lights. Spread an old quilt out on the ground, lie down on it, and look up at the sky. One or two a.m. is the best, sorry to say. But the sight is well worth staying up for. It will leave you feeling comfortably small in the greater scheme of things, and certain you’re part of something much larger than yourself. Here’s some further information for those of you who are inclined to stargaze.
Some of us are frightened by that feeling of smallness. But it’s good for us — a tonic, really. A reminder not to get too big for our britches. However overwhelming our problems and worries seem, they are pretty small compared to the galaxy and the whole, huge dome of the night sky.
Closer to home, we can get a little taste of that awe just by going to a park and watching the birds for a while. Or, if you are lucky enough to have a garden of your own, find a spot to sit down in it quietly for a while. It may seem to us that we have greatly diminished and compromised the natural world. And we have. But we are a long way from obliterating it. Every garden thrums with the intricacies of nature, and the natural world remains large and powerful enough to remind us of that regularly. We ourselves are just a small piece of it. But if we pay enough attention, we can begin to see how we fit in, and the rewards of that are great.
Among the many things I love about my garden is the gentle, almost tender ongoing education it gives me. After enough years of watching every bird, bug, and worm, every hungry creature, every sprouting seed of bean or weed, every leaf, whether wilted or luminous with health, a gardener gets a clear sense of when to act and when to engage in what my mother-in-law used to call “benign neglect.” In every beautiful garden, some humble and lucky human has successfully balanced their own desire for a particular result with the drives and necessities of nature. Since we are part of it all, we can sense its wants and needs — if we can be still enough to forget ourself.
So why am I talking about the Milky Way and gardening when the world is a shambles of anxiety and strife? I guess because the anxiety and strife come from the fear of uncertainty and change. Change often brings the loss of something or someone we cherish. And both the night sky and the garden have a lot to teach us about change and loss. In the night sky, the beautiful full moon slowly fades and goes dark. The red spark of Mars comes and goes. Meteorites streak past and wink out in an instant. So sad! But all of this takes place against the backdrop of slowly wheeling stars, and our great galaxy itself. The moon is only gone for a little while before it comes again, waxing slowly from a faint fingernail of light to a shining globe. The end of one thing begins another. We don’t really have much control over anything, and why would we want it? We don’t need it.
Out in the yard, my greatest hope is to someday attain the apparently artless wilderness of an English cottage garden. Which can only come from the constant call and response between a changing garden and a changeable gardener. When we play our part in the natural order, which is to revere and nurture what we love, we make the world more beautiful — even as it changes, and we change, over and over again.
In celebration of English country gardens, I’ve chosen Jimmie Rodgers’ rendition of the old English folk tune, “English Country Garden.” Rodgers is not a songwriter; just a wonderful singer. The words to the folk tune were written in 1960 by Robert M. Jordan, and recorded by Rodgers in 1962. There’s a certain amount of griping about the fact that the lyrics mention many species that are not native to England. I love it anyway, and I’m very fond of this video. It’s a perfect illustration of cultivated wild splendor. I hope you’ll like it as much as I do.
My reading the past couple of weeks has been somewhat bleak. I’m about halfway through The Civic Bargain: How Democracy Survives, by Brook Manville and Josiah Ober. It’s not supposed to be bleak. The authors do make some suggestions for getting ourselves out of our current predicament, based on their study of the histories of great democracies. See what you think. Till next time, keep writing to every elected representative who shows any sign of being sensible. Meet you among the hollyhocks.