Last December, I retired from university teaching and didn’t realize quite the toll the cumulative years of my career had taken on me. During most of 2019 I was ill with colds or sinus problems at every turn or recovering from surgery. I’ve lost count of how many weeks I spent on the living room couch. Whenever I felt better, my world expanded from the couch to the back yard and grew to include simple outdoor routines in the garden.
Recovering and re-building my strength occurred when I really had the will to focus on lives other than my own. And beyond focusing on the people closest to me, I included my familiar garden creatures.
The one-eyed rabbit has lived nearly three years in the garden. She first showed up on the patio one day with terrible injuries to her head; half of her face looked torn clean off. I didn’t see how she could live. I fed her, saying softly that she didn’t appear to be long for this world. But she lived, though her right eye was damaged beyond recovery. I’d shoo away squirrels until she finished eating and make brush piles or plant flower shelters for her to hide in. I’ve come to know her habits and preferences, and how her life moves through an ordinary day, a summer, and the depths of winter.
The one-eyed rabbit has lived nearly three years in the garden. She first showed up on the patio one day with terrible injuries to her head; half of her face looked torn clean off. I didn’t see how she could live. I fed her, saying softly that she didn’t appear to be long for this world. But she lived, though her right eye was damaged beyond recovery. I’d shoo away squirrels until she finished eating and make brush piles or plant flower shelters for her to hide in. I’ve come to know her habits and preferences, and how her life moves through an ordinary day, a summer, and the depths of winter.
We’ve kept company, in our own way. When I work in the garden, she snoozes a short distance away. Often, when I happen upon her, she stretches like a cat and yawns—a friendly greeting.
I was recovering from surgery at about the time the daylilies began to put on their colorful show. With the first inklings of returning energy, I sat one morning at the patio table with a cup of tea. The rabbit limped out with an enormous abscess on her leg that was half the size of her body. Again, I thought she’d met her match. But she hadn’t. Morning after morning I’d sit quietly and keep the other animals at bay while she ate. As I gained strength, I circled the yard to remove spent daylily blooms while the rabbit slept or watched me. Tending the daylilies was a task I found comforting and meditative. The plant puts out more and bigger blooms with this attention and in turn lures more insects, hummingbirds, and even frogs.
I felt like a small part of this garden haven, tidying up waste so that everything else could do its mighty work of thriving. I healed, and so did the rabbit, though she took much longer.
Now, in winter, she seems fine. She eats well, and her leg is strong. Will she survive? I don’t know. I’ve clocked a lot of time with this rabbit, and the routines of checking on her, greeting her, and sharing a few moments in the day or week have been an unvarying, vital part of the years’ turning.
And, so, an ordinary garden rabbit helps announce a return to this blog, which has been idle for nearly six years. Solstice, the darkest time of the year, is here—a natural time for reflection and gratitude. Oddly enough, my year of up-and-down health has had its benefits, and now in the short days of winter I think of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s remark that “'Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good, / That we may lift the soul, and contemplate / With lively joy the joys we cannot share.” I’d like to write again to share both the photographs and joys that I bring here from the outdoors, whether in the garden or further afield.
