When I was in the first few grades of elementary school I used to walk home by Stuliks Pet store. Mr Stulik was European with a very thick accent and was kind of scary. He sold gold fish and turtles. But what I remember most was that he had a magical rock garden with limestone rocks with holes out of which came moss, and ferns, and small flowers. It had a peculiar funny smell, sort of like going down into a cave. My favorite rock garden flower then and now is phlox.
Up close they are even more spectacular.
The Little House of Lost Play (Mar Vanwa Tyalieva)
by J R R Tolkien
We knew that land once, You and I, and once we wandered there in the long days
now long gone by, a dark child and a fair.
Was it on the paths of firelight thought in winter cold and white, or in the
blue-spun twilit hours of little early tucked-up beds in drowsy summer night,
that you and I in Sleep went down to meet each other there, your dark hair on
your white nightgown and mine was tangled fair? We wandered shyly hand in hand,
small footprints in the golden sand, and gathered pearls and shells in pails,
while all about the nightengales were singing in the trees.
We dug for silver with our spades, and caught the sparkle of the seas, then
ran ashore to greenlit glades, and found the warm and winding lane that now we
cannot find again, between tall whispering trees.
The air was neither night nor day, an ever-eve of gloaming light, when first
there glimmered into sight the Little House of Play.
New-built it was, yet very old, white, and thatched with straws of gold, and
pierced with peeping lattices that looked toward the sea; and our own children's
garden-plots were there: our own forgetmenots, red daisies, cress and mustard,
and radishes for tea.
There all the borders, trimmed with box, were filled with favourite flowers,
with phlox, with lupins, pinks, and hollyhocks, beneath a red may-tree; and all
the gardens full of folk that their own little language spoke, but not to You
and Me.
For some had silver watering-cans and watered all their gowns, or sprayed
each other; some laid plans to build their houses, little towns and dwellings in
the trees.
And some were clambering on the roof; some crooning lonely and aloof; some
dancing round the fairy-rings all garlanded in daisy-strings, while some upon
their knees before a little white-robed king crowned with marigold would sing
their rhymes of long ago.
But side by side a little pair with heads together, mingled hair, went walking
to and fro still hand in hand; and what they said, ere Waking far apart them led,
that only we now know.
