The very first sundial I ever encountered was in the semi-secret side garden of the Ko house. In the center of a circular stand of hosta, which itself was in the middle of a formal stone-lined section of the garden, near an enormous elm tree and not far from a grape arbor, it stood and marked the path of the sun, or so Suzie and I assumed. Neither of us could read it, even if the dial itself was still intact (that part remains fuzzy in my memory bank). I remembered what was in the surrounding garden quite more vividly: the beds of floppy peonies, heavy and wet from a previous eve’s rainfall – the dirty, leaf-filled basin of a small cement pool that was mostly dry all summer – and the bearded iris that insisted we sniff their beautiful fuzzy heads every time we passed. Only I obliged; Suzie was supremely uninterested in them, no matter how I extolled their virtues.
That sundial stood in the center of the space, yet it didn’t occupy the center of our thoughts. Children don’t often succumb to the intended focus of a place and we were no different. The bees buzzing in dangerous numbers among the Centaurea by the stone walkway demanded our notice, as did the perfume of that summer place, which I didn’t know then but subsequently discovered to be either the fringe tree nearer the street, or a hidden hedge of mockorange dividing the garden from the house next door. And grape taffy – Suzie shared some beneath the grape arbor, from which small green grapes were just starting to form – grapes that would never come to ripeness no matter how many times the sundial marked the day. Or maybe they did and we just weren’t there to witness them. Summer never lasted long enough when you were a kid.
The sundial seen in these winter photos was a gift from a few years ago, and I only just noticed the rather macabre grim reaper on it to indicate the passage of time, and its only slightly-more-hopeful message. Yikes. I’m going to take that as a sign of the passing winter, as it stands there in the snow, marking the march of the sun, and the passing season of a garden waiting to begin again.
