Fragments 1

It is peculiar living in the house of my childhood. I am tossed back and forth between the past and the present, and I sometimes daydream of an imaginary future－what might it look and feel like if it were really my home and not my mother's.

The first seven stairs from the basement to the landing still creak, the next seven up to the main floor do not. I still sneak up them sometimes, skipping treads on the lower set and stepping lightly, not wanting to wake my mother, even though there is no longer any chance of it, her hearing aid on the bedside table.

The oil furnace in the laundry room next to my bedroom bangs and groans as it comes on, the aluminum expanding with the sudden blast of heat at 6 a.m. every morning, summer and winter; no need to consult the clock. Voices still carry through the heat registers between the floors, mostly my mother’s on the phone or with her morning caregiver; sometimes I can almost hear my father’s voice, long silenced. The voices and footfalls and kitchen sounds no longer wake me up, as I rise before my mother these days. And now also I hear my mother’s night breathing through the baby monitor that connects my bedroom downstairs to her’s upstairs, a stark reminder of what has changed.

The old paneled door on my father’s original workshop, unlike the hollow modern doors in the rest of the house, was salvaged from somewhere or other and still squeaks as it always has; the ill-fitting knob still rattles. It still has the “Stupidvisor” sign on it－one end attached with a tack, one end taped－we children thought so hilarious when we gifted him with it, letting him know that he may be in charge at his work, but at home he was just our funny daddy. Each time I open that door the sound is as familiar to me as my own voice. My mother says she thinks she will ask Dan to paint it. Why, I ask, after half a century in this house and who knows how long in its previous life? I tell her I like it as it is, with all its history.

The room itself no longer smells of sawdust and varnish, since Daddy moved his shop to a new space over the carport after he retired, and it became my mother’s craft room with its worktable bought from JC Penney where it displayed bolts of fabric before Penney's moved out of downtown Centralia. Now the room is mostly storage (as is the replacement workshop). A shelf still stores the white-painted, compartmented wood boxes Daddy made to hold our camp kitchen needs; long empty. The pegboard with my organized father's outlines of the tools that used to hang there, the ghosts of what was, occupies the wall next to the workbench that still holds miscellaneous screws and string and things in its drawers.

The house is a museum of my dabbling life in arts and crafts: the first grade plaster imprint of my hand, over my mother’s dresser; the clay leaf I made in fourth grade art and the tiny vase I made on the wheel in a community art class after I moved across the country, on the shelf above the kitchen desk; the stenciled letter holder and the paperweight (I suspect it is really an ashtray–how the times have changed) with my 5th grade school picture behind the glass, on the desk; the glazed clay tiles stamped with things found in nature hanging on the wall – a 
project I found in Better Homes and Gardens when my first child was a baby; the crewel pillow (the only crewel I ever did) in the chair in the guest room; the work of my cross-stitch period after my second child was born, mostly moved－thankfully－to less prominent spots; the photo art quilt of my parents’ courtship and favorite places, on the headboard of my mother’s bed and 3-D fabric art, on the organ shelf－empty nester projects. And, still at it, the felt birds I just completed to hang from the dining room light fixtures that my father created.

Much has changed over the years, too: the floor coverings, the painted, papered, and back to painted walls; the addition of blinds on the windows that span the front of the house; most but not all the furnishings; repurposed rooms. Newer pots and pans have joined the old Revereware, crowding the cabinets because nothing is thrown out.

In spite of all that is the same and all that gradually changed over time, though, in these past nine months, it has come to feel like my current home more than my childhood home. Perhaps that’s a good thing, since it is my home right now; but I do kind of miss returning to that other home once or twice a year and being thrown into the past.

Come back tomorrow and I will take you outside.

Morning Sentence

Dawn cracks open the door
to the valley
lets the light leak in
to waken the cows
and the wild geese
she dusts off the mountain
and illuminates the cobwebs
that float through the treetops
and in her final task
before turning the work over to Day

sends the moon to bed.

I am late to my blog café Saturday morning, I couldn’t leave the hill. It is so beautiful. I woke in a bowl of vichyssoise so thick I knew Dawn had her work cut out for her. She is determined in her morning task, though, and doesn’t give up. Tomorrow she can be a sleepyhead, but today she will get the job done in a timely manner. Gradually the soup lightens, though it is no less opaque. Finally she gets the tiptop of the far hill dusted off, only to have it enveloped again as she blows off another one.

I head for my car reluctantly, but I don’t like to miss the quiet time at the coffee shop. Then with a shake of my head, I tell myself the coffee can wait, Dawn lingers for no one. I throw my bag into the car and turn back toward the valley side of the house. I have no clue what I am going to muse on in this weekly writing space anyway, and I don’t want to miss the fog sinking into the valley leaving me and the mountain high above the fray.

Sun is beginning to stream through the trees on the dark east side of the house, streaking obliquely through the fog highlighting the ferns and the fir branches where it hits them like featured actors on a dry ice stage. I round the house to the valley side to something I have never seen before: the sky is robin’s egg blue, the lower hills and valley are still obscured in fog, but for a slowly clearing veil that opens revealing the valley floor. It is as if Dawn blew a hole through the fog to let the valley dwellers know the day is coming, to hold tight. Just as my camera battery dies, she inhales and the hole closes back up. Later, when I look at the photos, I am reminded of the movie houses of my youth when the heavy velvet curtains parted and the movie began behind a sheer curtain that lifted to bring the picture into clarity.

I struggle to let the beauty speak for itself in the moment, not let my inability to capture it with my camera distract me from enjoying it. My mother says she has never seen a hole  in the fog either. I spend a few more minutes walking with her up the driveway. The chilly air is crisp and clean; just breathing is rapturous joy. Up the driveway, there is no sign of the fog. Once I get to town, there is no sign of the sky. I say a heartfelt thank you for the opportunity to live on the side of the hill. It will not always be so.

After our walk I make one more trip to the back side of the house. Everything is socked in again. I head down to town knowing that now Dawn will make quick work of her duty: one final blow from the belly into the diaphragm up through the throat and out her mouth in a silent ohm and she will pass the work on to the Day shift.

I made the right decision not to rush into Day. Dawn is deserving of attention and is, in fact, my favorite part of the 24-hour cycle. As I write this (on Saturday), I am aware that tomorrow will be different. The rains are returning for one thing. And Dawn won’t come until it’s time for Day. And Day will still be plugging on when I am ready for Twilight. I am not a fan of the early days of Time Change. But change happens, there is no stopping it. Dawn reminded me today not to let the moments and the experiences slip by without notice while I rush into the next one. We don’t get them back.

Welcome Abroad!

"Good morning!" I said.
"Where are you from?" he said, sans warmth, and
"Where are you going?" he said.

For lack of a better answer, I said I was going to the Peace Arch (which, I know now, is a stupid destination).

"Why are you crossing here then," he said, with no attempt to conceal his disdain, "instead of at the Peace Arch?"

I did not say because I'm a shunpiker; I'm not on the interstate and don't want to cross there. I divined that as unacceptable answer. I just said I'd been in Lynden and this crossing into Canada was closer.

He looked skeptical; I felt like a criminal, or an idiot.

"Go ahead," he said rolling his eyes and returning my passport. Clearly, since I didn't have any weapons, according to me, in his mind I was merely an idiot.

Reluctantly leaving Kale House, I had left Everson mid-morning and driven to Lynden, the town founded by my ancestor Phoebe Goodell Judson and her husband (remember my GPS I named Phoebe before taking off across the country last summer?). It is a very conservative town, first inhabited by Dutch Reformists. There appear to be more churches than anything else in the small town. I looked for the bronze sculpture of Phoebe and Holden, without success. The girl in the convenience store said she had lived there all her life and not heard of it. I undoubtedly knew more about the history of her town than she did.

I did find their graves before I proceeded north through the valley and past the neat arches of raspberry farms and on to the road that runs parallel to the border, the US road on the right, Canada on the left.

AT&T welcomed me abroad, if the border patrol was less than thrilled to have me. When I returned at the more acceptable crossing, I realized I could have told him I was at that crossing because in a toss-up between a 30 minute wait and a two minute wait he won, an insubordination that probably would have resulted in a strip search.

I have never been able to convert to metric, and I sure didn't want to get a speeding ticket in Canada. How fast is 80km/hr? I figured cutting it in half was a conservative estimate and close enough. Then I realized my oh so smart international Honda had it right there on the speedometer.

Per gallon gas prices in Canada don't end in 9/10ths. I saw .7, .8, even .0. And prices in each town are pretty much the same at all stations, unlike a town in Washington earlier in the day with a twenty cent difference at stations on adjacent corners. Other than that and speed limit signs it was hard to tell I was in a foreign country: Wendy's, McDonald's, Starbucks, Hampton Inn, Staples. Well, there was that mountain range that wasn't the Cascades that are normally to my north; and that body of water to the west that wasn't Puget Sound or the Pacific Ocean but the Strait of Georgia.

After the cold rain and hail on Saturday, and early clouds on Sunday, the day was spectacular. I drove north for a while on 13, then turned west on 1A, then south on 15 to White Rock. White Rock is a narrow, crowded beach town with the  Strait on one side of Marine Drive and shops and restaurants on the other. And lots of people on a warm sunny Sunday afternoon in March. I moseyed along it until I encountered a detour sign that turned up the hill. I'm talking hill here. Nearly straight up, first gear with running starts at the cross streets. Houses on the cross streets that I can't even imagine the cost of living in. I parked and walked a bit, took a few pictures, then headed for the Peace Arch and the line to cross the border. I didn't figure out how to walk to the Arch－not by going to the Peace Arch Park. The arch is between the north and south bound inspection stations.

A moment of panic at not being able to find my passport, resulted in turning out of the line (thankfully before I was too far in) and into a parking lot that might have been the way to get to the Arch. It had fallen between the passenger seat and the door. Finally getting to the front of the line, the guard came out of his booth and walked to the back of the car. He didn't do that to the cars ahead of me. I briefly wondered if the other border patrolman had put out an APB on the idiot going to the Peace Arch but crossing a few miles to the east. He asked where I was from, where I had been, and why I had driven all the way from Centralia to take a picture at White Rock. And what happened to my front license plate. Uh, hmm. Uh oh. I bet that was the one that was in the middle of the road at the railroad tracks in Centralia a couple of weeks ago.

I left feeling like a criminal AND an idiot. And waiting to be pulled over.

I continued on my off interstate way to Ferndale, then took I-5 to Hwy 11. Chuckanut Drive snakes high above Samish Bay south of Bellingham. The San Juan Islands are in the far distance, lesser islands closer. I saw two more bald eagles soaring above me. The water sparkled at low tide, exposing the oyster fields. It was a glorious day to be.

I must say, it felt good to be back on American soil. I would rather be a criminal on home turf than abroad.

Passages

A year ago this week, I put my beloved little house on the market, subjecting it and myself to the Change that comes with Venture. I miss my house with its cozy bedroom under the eaves. I miss my global purple, eccentric lime, and bittersweet orange doors. I miss 

the garden that I created out of my own sweat and strength and creativity. I miss the purple door-gate into the back yard and watching for the familiar sedums and hostas to emerge from the dead winter. I miss turning the soil and adding the compost that came from my own kitchen waste and the Black Kow that came from Lowes. I miss planting the summer annuals and the vegetables after what I hoped was the last frost and sometimes was not. I miss the cardinals and the titmice at the blue stained glass feeder on the deck outside my back door. I miss that it was all mine.

The dirt I have been dropping my coffee grounds onto all winter needs to be turned. The  mama and baby deer have walked through it, eating the bird food; I'm sure they would like me to plant something that would be more pleasing to their palette. And the moles and the slugs are waiting for their favorite tender plant parts, too. But it’s not my garden, and I still don’t have any interest. To paraphrase Ann Linnea in her book, Deep Water Passage, that I just read with amazement at her courage, both physical and emotional: Over here on this side of the country, on this side of my new life, I am trying to learn in a new way. Wait. Rest. Listen. Move forward out of the confidence of my own well. I have made several life-altering movements in the past, and I have found my way through the passages. I will again. In the last change, it was the garden that showed me a new way. This time it will be something else.

Over the past eight years, I often had the urge to take off on a weekend morning and just go someplace. But I could never find any territory I wanted to explore. I don’t love the southern Atlantic beaches and it was too far to the mountains and there was nothing in the North Carolina Piedmont that beckoned. In my new home there is no end of day trips I want to take. I am marking the roads I have traveled on my map, and it is turning orange. I think I could explore some county road through the hills and valleys every week and not weary of it.
 
This weekend I headed north. Way north. As far north as America goes. As I drove up highway number 9, paralleling Interstate 5, I bemoaned missing the photographs I wanted to stop and take to preserve the memory forever. But the route was a little too well traveled to pull over, and besides I was running late to meet friends for lunch in Bellingham, friends I met because I am a writer and so are they. So I had to satisfy myself with just enjoying in the moment the snow-patched hills that rose behind one of the many small lakes that dot the landscape here, their tops disappearing into the clouds. My eye observed the perfect vertical shot of water, hill, and sky as it flashed by. I smiled in the knowing that they would have been called mountains where I came here from; here they are just hills. And there would have been no way to capture for posterity the bald eagle that flapped out of the trees and made its ponderous way across the road right in front of me at windshield height, its snow white head, piercing eyes, and hooked beak leaving no doubt of its identity. WOW! Thanks!

Last night as I wrote this, I was in a lovely bed and breakfast in the tiny town of Everson, about an hour from the Canadian border. A mother and daughter, living together, own Kale House, where they make art and provide a warm welcome to travelers who find their way here. I sat in front of a gas fire with a glass of wine, wrapped in an afghan after soaking in a claw foot tub. The walls were painted nearly the same two-tone color I painted those in the house I miss, and the love seat that just fits me made me long for the one I have in storage. Perhaps I will get it out.

There was WiFi, but I didn’t think to ask for the password. I had a moment of disconnection panic, but instead I wrote and read and enjoyed the solitude as rain and then hail splat and pinged noisily against the west windows. Later I went to sleep to the music of the spring peepers through the open window. It would take more than a single evening to learn to relax into the certain kind of rest that comes of disruption of all routine, even that which I enjoy. But this is what I had, and I leaned in.

Next destination: Canada. (To be continued...)

Focus on the Windshield

Given that my word for  2013 is “Possibility,” how could I not click on the AARP video ad I saw on FaceBook:




“Watch our new video and find your Real Possibilities for work, money and community.” The text of the video:

"A car has a rather small rearview mirror so we can occasionally look back at where we have been. It has an enormous windshield so we can look ahead to where we are going. Now is always the time to go forward and re-imagine all the possibilities that lie before us."

When I got in my car several days ago for a couple hours of exploration in western Lewis County, my eye dropped onto the sideview mirror’s warning: “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.” The juxtaposition of those two messages got their hooks into my imagination.

Our past can dog us even as the future is coming at us. There is nothing wrong with our past－well, there are always some regrets: things we wished we hadn’t done, things we wished we had done, and those we wish we were still doing－but the thing about it is, it’s over. We can’t live there. And if we keep looking back and letting our longings for what is gone take priority, we die. And we start calling that death life.

As AARP implies, it is good to look at where we have been a little bit, insomuch as our past can inform how we want our future to look. But mostly that big windshield is where our focus should be. And keep your eyes off the damn sideview mirror where that past wants nothing more than to catch up and snag you.

When I was driving across the country last summer, toward my new life, CuRVy’s windshield was my frame on the world. The life in the rearview mirror was getting farther away with each mile. All I had was this moment and this sky with these jaw-dropping clouds and this abandoned farm with the tilting windmill and this soy bean field with perfect undulating rows and this ditch full of water lilies and this circle of snow-capped mountains and this Venture.

And now what I have is Possibility.

Lent, as I have said annually on these pages, is my favorite season. It has been a time of turning inward, and giving myself permission to be self-focused. I have walked in the garden to see what is peeking out from dormancy. I have done collage to see what in my life has been stuck underground and wants to spring forth if I let it. I have built a fire and wrapped in a blanket for hours and not felt like I “should be doing something.” Because I was doing something: I was struggling to bring forth life out of death.

I am finding that inward walk harder to do in my new life. Without a job to provide a framework for my days, without the open space outside that frame that is clearly mine－mine to paint a dark sky color with an awakening streak of light splitting it open－I am having a hard time identifying what time is mine and what belongs to something else. But things change. This is a year of change, of adapting, of being open to new life. I am finding my way.

On Thursday, I went to the last session of my drawing class. I learned a lot in the class, and not only about drawing. For one, I was surprised to discover how much I like drawing faces. What was most surprising is that I have always thought the ability to do so was light years beyond my capacity. Apparently only because I never tried, and I never asked for what I wanted: to learn. I had my eyes firmly glued to the sideview mirror and the voice in my head whining, “You can’t,” arguably the two most debilitating words in the English language. The thing about drawing faces, I discovered, is that my rendering can look nothing like the model. But then I find one little thing: the too-wide mouth, the too-short forehead, the too-narrow face that isn’t quite right. I make that one small adjustment and suddenly the familiar face pops into recognition. Or at least comes closer. And I say, “Oh!” and then “Wow!” “No, I can’t” becomes “yes, I can.”

I observe again the significance of small adjustments over Capitol Lake before yoga on Wednesday. The gulls are fighting their way into some invisible wall of air, flapping hard and making little headway. Then, turning ever-so-slightly this way or that, they catch a current going their way and glide with ease.

As I watch the gulls, my mind drifts to myself trudging up the snowy hill on the Elk’s golf course, half a mile down the hill from my home, along with dozens of other children pulling sleds, heads bent and shoulders hunched pushing into the frigid wind. It is hard work. Then we turn, take a running start, fling our bodies onto our Flexible Flyers, and careen back down the hill shrieking with that exhilarating mix of terror and delight. And then we do it again.

The whispers I am hearing in this season of inwardness is to keeping looking through the windshield, to glance into the rearview mirror for what worked in the past (and what didn’t), to listen for what I want, to engage in the struggle, to make small adjustments as needed to direct myself toward my desired future, to stay open to Possibility.

Spring Mourning

I left the Pacific Northwest as my life was teetering on the leading edge of summer. I was 24, and I was off for adventure. It was the end of May and spring was beginning to morph into summer in the PNW, too. The trees were greening, flowers were blooming, birds were nesting. With my new husband, I was heading out to tour the country in our homegrown camper-retrofitted VW bus: Orange Crate. It was 1976 and the country was celebrating its bicentennial. At the end of our Great Adventure we were moving to the other edge of the continent, where we would bounce between the mid-south and the deep south, though we didn’t know it yet. And I didn’t know it would be 37 years before I saw another Washington spring.

I am not a fan of southern seasons (especially summer), except for spring. Spring in the South is magnificent. It begins early, when children (and me) are still hoping for a renegade snowstorm. The daffodils bloom in January and every year people exclaim about how early they are. As the air warmed, weekends found me in the garden: looking for the hostas to poke up out of the nothingness of frozen earth; for the sedum and green shoots from the banana tree to emerge from the ground among last year’s frozen stalks; for buds on the brown hydrangea canes that I took for dead the first year; for the pansies I had planted in October to come out of hibernation and grow into the spaces. I watched to see if the Lenten rose would begin blooming at the beginning of Lent or hold off until Palm Sunday and stood eye-ball-to-eyeball with the cardinals in the greening Rose-of-Sharon tree out my second floor window.

The dogwood begins its step-dance toward glory. First the bud, then petals that take their sweet time opening like the roof of a planetarium to reveal the seeds like the stars, and then turn snow white and take on bragging rights. The shy redbuds edge in around the dogwood along the interstates, and the azaleas try their best to steal the show. I am not a fan of azaleas eleven months out of the year, but when the blazing scarlet and orange, the demure pink, the deep purple are flashing their stuff in yards across the awakening city, it is good to be alive.

All of this to say, in my three and a half decades away I never returned to the PNW in the spring. I came in the winter for Christmas. I came in the summer because I despise the southern heat and humidity－ and summer is glory time in this corner of the land. I came in the fall because it is still summer in the fall in the South as I waited impatiently to turn off the air conditioning. But spring in North Carolina is not to be missed. And so, in the autumn of my life now, this will be my first one here since my 24-year-old self moved from spring into summer several lifetimes ago.

I go looking for signs of spring on Friday. It is a spectacular cloudless day; Mt. St. Helens shouting out against the blue. I find clusters of tiny snowdrops－a fairy angel choir rehearsing Easter. A solitary yellow wild strawberry blossom. Half-a-dozen reticent blooms on the espaliered forsythia. Tiny crocuses peek up cautiously just above ground level. The buds on the flowering quince are a little bigger and one of the daffodils has a swollen top. There are tiny buds climbing the stems of the chrysanthemums that should have been cut down after the first frost.

As I write it is raining again, the misty almost-can’t-see-it rain. The weather forecaster called it wet fog the other day. It’s what makes the summer here a gloriousity－ when it finally comes sometime in July, when southerners are looking for escape. I look forward to rediscovering this forgotten season in my new old home, but I am mourning spring in the South. I anticipated this. I already have my ticket to North Carolina in April.

Choosh

"And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss" (J.K. Rowling)

I have been doing just this for nearly a decade and a half now－sitting in a cafe with a steaming mug of coffee and writing in a journal whatever is in my gut and seeing where it takes me. I've been sharing a more thoughtful version with whoever wants to read it for almost four years. But always it is a reaching down deep into myself, usually with pretty much no knowing what I will end up with.

I have a new favorite word: Choosh. And you won’t find it on Google－at least I couldn’t. It is a biblical Hebrew word meaning “sense” or “feeling.” It is onomatopoetic－which is my lifetime favorite word－capturing the sound of a rush of breath that emanates from the deep reaches of the spirit. It is a word that speaks not of rational deliberation and assessment, but of inner vision. It is what you sense, not what you know.

I’ve been thinking about that word all week. When have I experienced choosh? When have I known deep down into spirit what I should do or what I thought would happen that defied all reason and fact? Certainly when I bought my house. It was ridiculous to think I could financially manage that, and crunching the numbers bore out my doubt. And I had no evidence that I could take care of a house all by myself. Then there was the garden: it was a mess. But my choosh was that it would work out, and I was the only one standing in the way of letting it happen. I bought that house, and that garden, and in the five years they were mine my life was changed.

When I first saw Ed Jones at the University of Washington in 1973 in the dorm we both lived in, I had barely been introduced to him before choosh, I knew I would marry the skinny man from the midwest with the wildly curly hair. Three years later it was irresponsible to conceive a baby with no income other than a graduate student stipend, but choosh we did it anyway: Nicholas. People kept cautioning me not to be so certain our second baby was a girl, and it would have been okay if it weren’t, but my choosh told me that she was: Emma. Deep down sensing.

I heard about a position that might be created at Pullen Baptist Church. I had no earthly business thinking I could be a financial secretary, but deep down spirit informed me that I was to go after it; and I did, even before it was open. And Ben, who recommended I be hired, listened to his choosh too, and took a chance on me. I grew that job and grew in it for 11 years before another choosh told me it was time to leave stable employment in the midst of a recession, to pack up and sell my house in a sluggish market and move across the country.

Those have been the big evidences of choosh in my life; I’m sure there are hundreds of small ones. Or are there? How often do I close my eyes, shut out the noisy world, and ask what is in my gut? Or just know without even thinking about it? There are the two or three times I have rolled down my window at the intersection and handed a dollar to the downtrodden person holding a cardboard sign asking for God to bless me. Once I handed someone the lunch I had just bought at Subway. Why? Choosh. A rush of breath that whispered “do it.” 

Sometimes I hear my choosh and let doubt persuade me to ignore it. And then feel disappointed in myself later. That happened recently, and I still feel bad. I pray that young expectant couple at the gas station who rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night without any money, got gas in their car to get home. Christina Baldwin writes beautifully in her blog this week of story happening at a rest stop on I-5 near Portland, her experience of listening to her choosh that surely changed lives: hers and the desperate mother’s.

Sometimes our decisions are driven by circumstances. We follow the yellow brick road, doing what we have to do, what gets thrown at us. We may go along for a while, trying to make the outcome different, all the while knowing in our deep spirit choosh place Oz won’t be where we end up or where we want to be when we get there. We close our eyes, shut out the racket, and ask what is in our gut, and finally follow it home. 

Do we take time to listen for our choosh? Will listening to what our inner guidance is telling us help us make decisions? I don’t know. But I am going to start paying attention. I shouldn’t have to be knocked over the head with it. Lent begins this Wednesday. I am going to engage a practice of slowing down, quieting my head, shutting out the world’s wisdom, and listening for my spirit wisdom. I am going to listen for my choosh.

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray” (Rumi).

[I am suspending my practice of using only the week’s new photos in my blog to share some photos of the inner spirit of flowers in my Raleigh garden.]