When the hot soil is turned over to prepare for a June planting, nothing in a handful of wispy, black marigold seeds hints at the explosion of crimson and gold they will loose when their time comes. The plan for our first Umoja garden was to ring the edges with them because they attract pollinators, their scent discourages pests, and their colors symbolize both the crimson violence of oppression and the butter-yellow beauty of life.

The dimness of what we had imaged verses what finally cropped up was surprising. If you could pick the brightest most perfect summer day, bottle it, then release it during the last weeks of fall – mist and half-light hinting at the winter to come – that is what it is like to stand in the middle of a field of marigolds with seemingly no hint that, soon, the first frost will sweep them away as surely as the dead, wind-swept leaves swirling around them.

If you’ve received some marigolds from an Umoja Unity Garden, we hope they will remind you that the pain, beauty, and brevity of life are the ties that bind us to our humanity. Sharing stories, exercising empathy, and finding ways to love is what makes and keeps us human . . .

Autumn in the Garden

by Henry Van Dyke

When the frosty kiss of Autumn in the dark
Makes its mark
On the flowers, and the misty morning grieves
Over fallen leaves;
Then my olden garden, where the golden soil
Through the toil
Of a hundred years is mellow, rich, and deep,
Whispers in its sleep.

‘Mid the crumpled beds of marigold and phlox,
Where the box
Borders with its glossy green the ancient walks,
There’s a voice that talks
Of the human hopes that bloomed and withered here
Year by year,–
Dreams of joy, that brightened all the labouring hours,
Fading as the flowers.

Yet the whispered story does not deepen grief;
But relief
For the loneliness of sorrow seems to flow
From the Long-Ago,
When I think of other lives that learned, like mine,
To resign, And remember that the sadness of the fall
Comes alike to all.

What regrets, what longings for the lost were theirs!
And what prayers
For the silent strength that nerves us to endure
Things we cannot cure!
Pacing up and down the garden where they paced,
I have traced
All their well-worn paths of patience, till I find
Comfort in my mind.

Faint and far away their ancient griefs appear:
Yet how near Is the tender voice, the careworn, kindly face,
Of the human race!
Let us walk together in the garden, dearest heart,
Not apart!
They who know the sorrows other lives have known
Never walk alone.

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