On the Aroma of a Garden

               Today was a great day. It was the first real kiss of a golden summer promised but that has yet to arrive. Walking my dog down an old country lane, rutted beyond vehicular access, the red winged black birds sang loudly, echoed by distant frogs in the grips of spring’s amorous fervour. A friend had just departed my house. Her presence is always a welcomed edition to my day. On a spring day as full of summer’s promise as this, her green eyes sparkled in the afternoon light.

                Grilled meat and bird song, flowers awakening and yearning for the sun, these are portents of lazy dog days soon to arrive. I found myself wishing for the re-emergence of the catalpa, whose scent overpowers the late spring nights. It always makes me remember Greece, which is in itself an oddity. There were no catalpas in Greece that I can recall. Their distinctive scent played no role in the tapestry that was woven into my memory. Perhaps it is simply a floral scent at night, potent and vigorous, that triggers this memory. That is certainly possible. Greece, dry though it was in high summer, exploded with blooms. And so, the presence of a garden’s heady perfume awakens my mind. It is a good working hypothesis. So much of Greece can sear the soul, so this does not surprise me.

                I recall lying out, under a canopy of bougainvillea, the star’s wheeling overhead. Brad and I were in Olympia, the locale of the ancient Olympic Games, and the birthplace of the modern. In the distance, mighty thunder clouds massed, preparing to assault the Peloponnese like a legion Athenian hoplites. Later that same night the storm would break over us, forcing a retreat to the safety of Camping Diana’s covered patio, as our terraced tenting space filled with an overabundance of water, the ground too beaten and dry to absorb the torrent. But at that moment, the storm was a rumour, nothing more than a whisper of chilled air hidden in a chorus of floral breezes. The pink blossoms that crowded the pergola above my head were alive in the night air, their aroma more than a match for our worn out boots, and drying socks, freshly laundered in a campground sink.

                Earlier in the day we had wandered the site of Olympia. I had a minor advantage over Brad, as I had studied sport in the ancient world. For me, walking amongst the faded glory, past leaning pillars and collapsed plinths, it was a near religious experience. I knew that the great ivory statue of Zeus, stolen from the temple to the same god, was one of the seven Wonders of the Ancient World. I knew that Milo of Kroton had bent his head to pass under the victory arch in six straight Olympiads, head bedecked in laurels, hair dripping olive oil; a man whose exploits were never to be paralleled in either the ancient nor modern Games.  Philip of Macedon, an empire builder, and father to the great Alexander, captured non-martial glory with his horses, his quadriga winning him an athlete’s immortality at the Games.

                We ran the stade, feet kicking up dust, the only spectators a stand of straight backed cypress trees, and a collection assorted tourists fresh off of their bus. Wandering away from the ancient site, we rounded a bend, and saw a lone pillar in a quiet stand of trees. Baron du Coubertin, the father of the Modern Olympics, in memorial here amongst the cypress needles, a solemn place not made for pomp or celebration. I wondered then what the Baron would think if he were to see his dream now, what his amateur ideal had morphed into as the years rolled on by; a circus of money and politics, ideals as faded as the fallen temples and little remembered athletes who graced this place with their blood and sweat.

                Luke and Carmen, an Australian couple who shared their time with us as we wandered Olympia, took us for supper in town. A taverna, where grilled meat filled the air with charred aromas. A spirited game of Uno and a few bottles of retsina, that acrid and potent wine found only in Hellas, were to follow on the patio of the campground (the same patio where Brad and I were to seek shelter later that night as the storm broke over us with a violence unfamiliar in the Peloponnese).

                Always, acting as an undercurrent, was the scent of flowers. Oleander, bougainvillea, blossoms bursting, nights filled with their song. As summer awakens now, still with the faint whiff of cold in the air, and flowers peek out from their long rests, I think of Greece. I always do, which is a glad thing. So much of Greece can sear your soul, but not all burns need be feared.

The blossom breathes its

Kiss unto the night; alive
With wild promise, sing

On a Grecian plain,
Beneath stars aflame with life,
Shrouded in bloom, breathe.
(“On the Aroma of a Garden”, G. Ludkin 2007)