Paradise

We just went to paradise to visit my newly planted basil and check on my flat leaf parsley. A toddler's pair of pink sparkly shoes were left on the wooden bench under the grape arbor. A couple of women came in the garden gate with a little boy who ran joyously over to their garden. He harvested peas from plants taller than himself. I sat with Lily while Bill climbed the berm. I was reading Leonard Cohen's book of illustrated poems, which I had just gotten from the public library next door. Lily chewed grass and drank water out of a red wheel barrow. This piece of paradise is my new daily oasis. I visit ten minutes a day and hope to do so all summer long. I want to build a beehive oven and have a bread fest, pizza fest, and apple pie fest in the autumn. Maybe I'll even have a mask-making workshop and a storytelling festival for families at Harvest Weekend.

Middle English paradis, from Anglo-French, from Late Latin paradisus, from Greek paradeisos, enclosed park, from Avestan pairi-daēza, circumvallation, walled-in park: pairi, around + daēza, wall.