The morning light breaks through the early fall mist and the gardens, a spectrum of verdant colours outlined by rows of vegetables. Between the branches a field of much more than dreams. There a sunflower and there another one, each planted in whatever space the early crops created. Heads bending to the ground burdened with seed seeking soil. A morning vista framed with time and history. Keats called this a “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” There a pumpkin bursting through the vines with bright orange camouflage.

The note on the counter says something about packing for warmer weather. Greener pastures! One glance at my digital memory and I know that this green, this ripening green is going to be hard to match.

That corn patch with 624 plants of corn, started from seed with the sometimes green thumb that Miles brought to the early season. This picture is for you, so you could see that plants set out on July the fourth could head out and grow ears by labour day. This much corn in the new garden!!! Look there a cucumber patch under the sunflower plants and on the other side watermelons! A cornucopia getting ready for a wholehearted thanksgiving!

There is an axiom that says in an unstable community people do not plant fruit trees. This picture of hope speaks not only of stability, but of vision. The fruit trees in the gardens at the Last Door Keystone retreat point to years and generations of recovery. Somehow writing this on the eve of Recovery Day drives the vision of hope home. Those trees, like all the people celebrating recovery are signposts of hope. Years later someone will wonder how we got here, who planted the trees, who wrote the recovery literature, who had vision for parades and floats and trees and corn?

In the images green might be the colour of hope, but the hues and shadows speak of a deepening green. The green of summer melds into the shades of fall, creating a blessedness that goes beyond crops, beyond gardens, beyond persons toward a hope for generations. The landmark of a good God.