Rocks and Gardens

I have always loved flowers and gardens—not just liked them but LOVED them. I feel refreshed and renewed and filled by them somehow. Even my daughters are named after plants and flowers, and I think they have the most beautiful names in the world! The first thing Sam and I did as a married couple—well, after the wedding lunch and waving goodbye to everyone and kissing in the car for a while—was go to the Thanksgiving Point gardens to look at the flowers. It was April, and they were so beautiful! Since then, everywhere Sam and I have gone in the world, we have looked for gardens. Parks, botanical gardens, even desert gardens. We've seen so many beautiful things!

Sam, on the other hand, loves rocks. Old rocks, new rocks, slanted rocks, sparkly rocks. If it's a rock or even rocklike, you can bet Sam's going to want to

• look at it

• look at it again

• talk about how it got there

• marvel at the geologic layering around it

• consult "Roadside Geology" about it

Everywhere we've gone in the world, we've looked for rocks. Fossils and topaz, wonderstone and agate. We've seen so many beautiful things!

As I was reflecting on our 22 (!) years of marriage at the end of April, I was thinking about how fitting it is that we've loved these two conflicting and yet complementary things. We've seen so much good together, so much happiness. But we've felt pain and sorrow and loss too. We've cried together, we've cried apart. We've felt our hopes crumble and our faith falter. We've seen ashes and beauty and beauty for ashes. Flower and soil, valley and mountain, water and rock. Marriage is all of this, and we're learning to hold all of it within ourselves, the two of us like one, trying to make our garden grow. There's beauty in all of it, if we look for it. And maybe this is what a fulness means. 

 

But on to what this post was originally supposed to be about!

Once many years ago while Sam was out of town, I bravely drove to Vernal with all the kids to see Dinosaur National Monument. We were having a school unit about dinosaurs at the time, and it was so much fun to get close to them in this way. We loved the huge wall of dinosaur bones in the park, and the cool dinosaur museum in town. Teddy was a baby, and Abe sat next to me in the van and we talked and talked about all kinds of things as he tried to keep me awake. 

Ever since then Sam has felt a little sad that HE didn't get to go, so we decided for our anniversary this year, we'd drive there, just the two of us. We even found a little basement apartment Airbnb where we could stay overnight. Seb and Malachi had school off that day, so they were home to keep an eye on everyone while we were gone (although, let's be honest, the girls did most of the eye-keeping-on).

It's such a pretty drive out that direction. We so rarely have a reason to go that way! Last time we went it was so much greener, but this time there were huge stretches of terrain just covered in snow. It didn't seem that deep until you saw just the tops of a tall fence sticking out of a drift, or this little bathroom we saw by a reservoir…

…which as you can see, is halfway buried under the snow!

The landscape when you get to Vernal is interesting. Desert-y and dry, but with green valleys and farms and such colorful, twisting rock layers!

Sam and I hiked around by the visitor's center to see some bones and fossils along the trail. There are clam impressions in rocks, and lots of bones just captured haphazardly by ancient rivers and now trapped in cliff walls.

It was Monday (that's the day missionaries in Abe's mission can call home), so we were talking to Abe a lot of the time as we were walking around. We showed him some fossils too! :)

Here's the view from the place we stayed at. So pretty!

The next day, we drove the "Scenic Drive" at the monument, and all along the way the memories just kept flooding back of when I'd come here before with the kids. It was so strange! I could almost see and hear those funny little monkeys of mine, chattering in the car and running around the picnic area. It was like being surrounded by ghosts! I even had pictures in my head (based on pictures I'd taken, I'm sure) of how the kids looked eight years ago, climbing on rocks and exploring by the river. It made me feel so sentimental. Sometimes I miss those days and those children so much!

Here's how it looked when Sam and I were there…

and here's the same spot eight years ago. It was only a month later in the year, but look how much greener everything was!

Here's tiny little Malachi back in 2015. So cute!

And here's Sam this year in the same place!

We hiked up into an interesting round canyon, like a cul-de-sac at the end, as if it had been carved out in a whirlpool shape by wind or water.

Sam loved all the slanting layers of sandstone. He does love his rocks.

Such a dramatic landscape!

There was a dear little cabin there, built by one of those brave strong pioneer women one always wishes one could be more like. She lived there alone, taking care of her cattle and irrigating the little flower garden around her cabin with the ditches she dug herself, for something like fifty years. I kept thinking about what that kind of life would have been like. I think I might have liked it, if I had to choose a completely different life than what I have now! It sounds so peaceful, anyway.

We drove home in the afternoon (stopping for a 30-minute roadside nap because neither of us could stay awake!) and returned home to children who'd hardly noticed we were gone. But it was a lovely way to celebrate these wonderful, soul-stretching twenty-two years—and hope for just as much happiness in the next twenty-two.

We'd taken the trip to Vernal a few days before our actual anniversary, so on the night itself we went on our date to Red Butte Garden, another place that's been a staple in our married life, at least the past twelve years or so of it. The daffodils were out in force!

Yellow and blue is always a good color combination.

Pink and blue, too!

Funny long-nosed daffodils

Star magnolia! I miss the star magnolia we had at our old house.

Bluebells in the wood. (I don't think they're really bluebells, actually. But they remind me of the ones in England.)

I'm so happy it's really Spring!

And one more garden we've been to lately—for Junie's birthday this time—the Butterfly pavilion.

Ky contemplates nature's fragility

My two blondest, rosiest cherubs

All Clementine wanted to do was walk up and down this ramp

She did ooh and ahh at a few butterflies, though!