That querulous question was once asked by an unhappy amateur gardener who called the University of Saskatchewan’s gardening help line to complain about a fruit tree that had not survived a harsh Saskatoon winter. I laughed when my friend told me that story. “Undead,” indeed!

            I was not laughing earlier this spring when I stared at the brown clumps of deadness that had been, only a year ago, a stunning border of forget-me-nots halfway around our front patio.

The flowers are tiny, yet such a gathering of unearthly blue is unforgettable. I had first met their alpine cousins in the high places of the Rocky Mountains where I feel closest to heaven. To grow a domestic cultivar here in the prairies had given me so much joy.    

That they should be lifeless this spring was bitter heartache. I was not surprised that our erratic yo-yo winter of too warm, then nastily cold without adequate snow coverage, would result in some casualties, but the precious forget-me-nots? That was too cruel. After all, our rose bushes survived. So did some vulnerable new perennials planted last year. I grumbled at the unfairness of it all.

            Then out of the dead clumps that I hadn’t been able to make myself pull out, a few tiny leaves appeared, weeks after the plants should have greened up and bloomed. I have scarcely dared to rejoice for fear that recovery might still be elusive. Yet day after day, the defiant re-emergence of new life continues.      

            With a beautiful synchronicity, the resurrection of those beloved forget-me-nots occurs as two other recoveries, both also connected with gardening, occupy my thoughts.     

Last year at this time, I was looking at the world from a mostly horizontal position and through eyes dulled by drugs and disappointment. June is normally a joyous month. It’s the month of gardeners’ delights: new seedlings up, trees and shrubs leafed out and blooming with abandon, first berries ripening. It’s the month of endings and beginnings: winter’s over, school’s almost over; vacations are planned and long, light-filled evenings encourage family picnics and grad parties. June has the summer solstice—the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Who wouldn’t be happy? Why not have dinners outdoors, with birds providing musical accompaniment?

 Last year, all those joys passed me by as I struggled to manage sciatic pain and accept a disabled, dependent state. As if in tune with my discontent, the weather was unseasonably hot and dry, and then became even more miserable because of persistent heavy smoke from out-of-control wildfires in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and even BC. 

That was last year. This year, while I could complain (and have) about unseasonably cool temperatures, I spend my days upright, walking, cycling, working in the garden—simple pleasures, those.  For me, they feel like resurrection. I have recovered my mobility and my avocations. There’s even a camping trip in our future, planned for July. Hallelujah!

My transformation was not instantaneous. It was slow, sometimes so slow that I was bitterly discouraged, and increasingly resentful of the frequent question “you’re still not better??” For the patience of my family and for the tender, persistent care of physiotherapist and doctor, I will be forever grateful. Recovery is a beautiful word; it holds within it an intimation of the power of life, of goodness. It tells me that “undead” is not laughably impossible, after all.

            And I was immediately drawn into what writer Alice Munro called “a state of enchantment.” There Is a Season (published 2004) is a profound recovery narrative, a recovery so unlikely that I felt overwhelmed to witness the power of gardens to restore their gardener, of human love to accompany a lost soul, and of the strength of the human will to persist in spite of all obstacles.  

Patrick Lane, renowned Canadian poet, wrote the book, his first prose publication, during his year of recovery from a lifetime of addiction to alcohol and cocaine. He and his partner, poet Lorna Crozier, lived on a half-acre on Vancouver Island, an excellent place for a life-long gardener. Working on his developing gardens, Lane gains the strength to face his memories of past family pain and trauma, which he shares with honesty and compassion. There is no blame laid here, nor is there any shrinking from the hardship and violence he experienced in his childhood and early adulthood.  This is a deeply vulnerable book that explores both great sadness and enduring love.

What amazed me was that his drive to write poetry, to explore the magic of words, began in his childhood. Never mind that he had to teach himself all he knew of literature and the poetic craft. He became a recognized poet, winner of several awards, teacher of creative writing in several universities, recipient of an honorary doctorate from McGill University in Montreal.

There Is a Season offers some of the finest nature writing I have ever read. Every word feels lovingly chosen and deftly placed. Among the tributes printed on the back page are two particularly apt observations: “A brave and beautifully written account . . . . The sheer richness and beauty of the language is one of the great pleasures to be found in this book” (Edmonton Journal); “A tour de force that will break your heart and put it back together again” (Montreal Gazette).  

For me, the book was, and is, a gift. I am almost as awed that I should have chosen, finally, to read this book, just as I was beginning to grasp that I was, after all, returning to “normal,” not some “new normal” that I had dreaded for so many months. Not that my recovery was anything at all like the recovery that Patrick Lane describes. I had had merely a few weeks of pain and then many weeks of minimal progress; Lane was learning an entirely new way of being.

            My forget-me-nots have become “undead.” It has taken time. More and more, I believe that the profoundest miracles are not instantaneous or even obviously miraculous. Both hope and its consummation are often subtle, always persistent.

” No matter the dark hours when we ask that our burdens be lifted, ask instead that hope be how we live, our hands sure in the earth.” (Patrick Lane)