The Last Garden

By Peter Skeels

Michael is now an old man, and he decides to grow a garden where none had grown before. As he does so, he looks back on his life and forward to his hopes and fears. Michael reminisces about his past, and he truly wonders if his life has answered the existential questions of why he is here and what the purpose of his life is. Michael is a survivor of life, and so he enjoys nourishing his garden and watching the survival of his plants. He wonders if there is somehow a connection between him creating this garden and his life: what, if anything, can this be? Read on and see what Michael learns as the year unfolds while he tends to his garden.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781398434356

Peter Skeels

The author has been a draft dodger, a traveller, a stone mason, a single parent, a teacher, a businessman, a life coach and a storyteller. He has lived and travelled extensively throughout America and Europe. He sought to find his way in life despite not having a handy how-to guide. His two constant guiding principles are his belief in God and to always try to do the next right thing. All the while he has been, more than anything else, a naturally happy survivor.

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About the Author

The author has been a draft-dodger, traveller, stonemason, single parent, teacher, businessman, life coach, and storyteller. He has lived and travelled extensively throughout America and Europe. He sought to find his way in life despite not having a handy how-to guide. His two constant guiding principles are his belief in God and to always try to do the next right thing. All the while he has been, more than any other things, an optimistic, gregarious, and happy human.

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to my daughter, Rheannin, and my son, Mathew, who without knowing it were part of my growing up as they too were growing up. The love I gave them, though far from perfect, entitled me to learn to love myself.

Copyright Information ©

Peter Skeels 2022

The right of Peter Skeels to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398434349 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398434356 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Synopsis

This is the story of Michael’s meandering search for the meaning for his life. Michael demands facts before he believes something is true, and yet he finds, usually, only opinions. Michael is one of those souls for which the opinions of society and the opinions of religion hold little to no value. Michael does try to fit in but he never can and perhaps he never will. Michael is old now and he is living a solitary yet abundant life. His one constant companion is his little dog. He builds a new vegetable garden, he hikes, he fishes, and he writes. He lives a full life while also looking back on his past. He looks at his life in present time and he looks to his hopes and fears going forward.

Michael finds himself at a time and place where he can look back over the path his life has taken to see if he has truly found the meaning and purpose to his life. Michael believes there must be both, for his life to have meaning, and to have had meaning. He believes he has spent his life searching for both and he takes this time to succinctly express the essential parts of his life’s search for his life’s meaning and its purpose. These expressions, conversations and memories are between Michael, his god, and sometimes the readers of his writings, or whomever may be listening at the time.

Chapter 1

The old man rested his hands on the weathered, wooden railing that surrounded his deck, and as he looked to the south, he could see, through the trees, the lake he lived so close to. He lived in a forest of lodgepole, fir, sugar pine, cedar, ponderosa, aspens and manzanitas, with some of the trees one hundred to one-hundred-and-fifty feet tall.

Michael had watched himself as he had grown old; he had noticed his body slowly give up some of its strength, and he had watched his body give up some of its health. His once muscular body had given way, over the past two decades, to aches and pains where he had never had aches and pains before, and his muscles had weakened and lost their once strong definition.

Long gone now were the days without any aches and pains, and long gone now were the days of fluid movement and carefree balance. He had laughed aloud as he passed twenty, and, while he was surprised to still be alive at thirty, he still laughed. But he stopped laughing at forty and fifty. By sixty and recently seventy, he knew now with all certainty that the road ahead was far shorter than the road he had travelled to get here. He took a puff of his cigar, he watched as the smoke drifted slowly away, and again he looked out through the trees at the placid lake.

Although he had owned his cabin in the woods for nearly twenty years, he had used it only as a fishing and hunting retreat for most of that time. The past two decades had been a hectic and stressful time, and his internet business had certainly contributed to that. But his relationships had also caused him an equal amount of stress, so he would drive the four plus hours each way two to three times a month to escape to his cabin in the woods. He loved it at the cabin, and his good friend bought him a wooden sign that read, LIFE IS GOOD AT THE CABIN. Michael had it hanging above the stove in his kitchen. Michael would come to the cabin to escape, he would fish the lake near him, he would fish the surrounding lakes, and he and his dog would hike the mountains that surrounded him. Michael came at least twice a month, usually for four days each time, sometimes staying longer but rarely less.

Then slightly more than a year ago, he had decided to move to the cabin full time. The decision turned out to be surprisingly easy. He had thought that since he was leaving a city where he had lived for twenty-two years, a city where he had made many friends, a city where he had run a successful business for twenty-one years, a city where his girlfriend of four years lived, and a city where he had many ties, that it would be difficult for him to leave. Yet it wasn’t difficult for him to leave at all.

He decided to initially tell only his girlfriend, and since she was more of an affair than a girlfriend, she voiced no concerns or opposition. She only said that she would miss him. He told his realtor he didn’t want a For Sale sign on his property as he didn’t want to attract the attention that would draw. His realtor, of course, strongly objected, telling him that there would be far less people who would know his house was for sale, but Michael didn’t care. He told his realtor that God would take care of everything, and he told his realtor that because he was a writer, he would need special care. He told his realtor he couldn’t be interrupted all the time, and he told the realtor he would be strict about that.

He let his neighbours find out as and when they did, and in only a few short months, his house had sold. Michael packed up his belongings and moved. It was remarkably easy and remarkably unemotional.

He took another puff from his cigar. Myriad birds were singing; the Osprey were whistling over the lake and the tree tops as they flew back and forth catching fish to feed their young. Squirrels were leaping from tree to tree, or else eating the sunflower seeds he had put out for them. Chipmunks scurried nervously from their shelter to grab a sunflower seed or two, and then they would scurry back to their shelter. Occasionally, geese would fly overhead honking, and the enchanting calls of the loons could be heard. Two ring-necked doves were pecking the left-overs from the squirrels, and the day was beginning to get warm.

The old man loved standing here on his deck. The old man loved smoking his cigars. And now the old man loved watching his garden grow. Several weeks earlier he had decided to plant a garden here for the first time. His cabin was at an altitude that was much higher than anywhere he had lived before. He now lived on the eastern slope of the Cascades, at the point where the Cascades meet the Sierras. According to geologists and books he had read, there was subduction, which is where one plate, the Juan de Fuca Plate, moved under the North American Plate, which caused immense pressures. Pressures so great, mountains were literally moved and raised.

The Cascades had begun moving east thirty-six million years ago and that movement east caused both the Cascades and the Sierras to rise. The immense pressures also caused the volcano Mt Lassen to form, and gold was first deposited and then lifted by the slow-motion movement of the mountain ranges colliding, which resulted in the Gold Rush of 1848 through 1855.

The area where Michael now lived was full of history; from the Indians who had lived here as recently as the 1940s, to the Gold Rush, to the huge Chinese population that once lived in this area, not only working the gold mines, but also building the many miles of railroad lines and digging the tunnels through the mountains along the Feather River Canyon, which was located twenty-five miles east of him. The lake that was about two hundred yards from his house was built by PG&E, as were many other lakes in his state, to provide hydroelectric power.

The lake was now not only providing water for hydroelectric power but, during the summer, it was also a major recreational lake. There were many modest homes like Michael’s but there were also many million-dollar and multi-million-dollar homes built at the lake’s edge, with private boat docks and breath-taking views. The trout fishing was legendary and world famous, and for Michael he could simply walk to the lake and catch fish anytime he wanted. He had a boat but lately he hadn’t taken it out much. He preferred the simplicity of walking and bank fishing. Yes, this area was beautiful and Michael had grown to love living here.

Living here though was proving to be hard on his body. His body that had been at one time so strong he could literally do anything he wanted, was now balking at what he was asking it to do. Particularly bad was his right shoulder which had been giving him issues for about four years, and typically the pain would flare up when he overdid something. When he over worked his shoulder, he could sometimes find himself in excruciating pain to where he couldn’t use his arm at all, and at those times he would be forced to stop using it, and he would resort to using ice therapy and occasionally pain meds.

He would be forced to stop using the arm and shoulder until the pain would dissipate and, several weeks later, all would be good again. Lately though, that scenario wasn’t happening. The pain wasn’t subsiding and he was having acute shoulder pain even reaching out and lifting his coffee cup. So, as he stood there looking out at his garden and his surroundings, and listening to the wonderful sounds of nature all around him, he wondered if he would be able to continue living in such a physically demanding environment. Every day he needed his shoulder for things from drinking his coffee, to drying his back and for putting on his t-shirt, to splitting and stacking logs and then carrying the logs into the cabin for the woodstove.

His garden he had built himself. He bought six cedar planks, each ten feet long, twelve inches wide and two inches thick, from the local builder’s supply, and he constructed two planter boxes each ten feet by five feet. He dug the sloping ground, he moved and positioned rocks to level the boxes, he placed large flat rocks under the corners until they were each sitting level on the sloping area in front of his deck. He made sure they were both square, and then he had four yards of topsoil delivered, which he then shovelled into the planter boxes.

Michael needed to build a fence around his soon-to-be garden so the deer wouldn’t eat everything, and it was during the pounding in of the metal fence posts with a ten-pound sledge hammer that he had further hurt his already damaged right shoulder. But he carried on through the pain and got his garden finished. The garden’s planter boxes were longer than they were wide, and in rows eighteen inches apart and the length of the boxes, he planted carrots, radishes, spring onions, spinach, and beans in one box.

For the beans, he also put in a row of fencing ten feet long for the beans to climb up on. Along the end rows, the five-foot part of one box, he planted whole Brussels sprouts a foot apart, and at the other end he planted garlic. In the second grow box, which was the same size as the first, he planted one row each of celery, Brussels sprouts, romaine lettuce, and potatoes. Along one edge he planted five seeds of corn and along the other end he planted three marijuana plants that he had started in small pots on his deck.

He left a couple of rows empty to plant later, and he left spaces for more of his beloved marijuana plants, which he had grown for more than a decade straight. He probably only used an ounce of marijuana a year, if that, and mostly he just enjoyed the process of growing things. But this time, the process of creating this new garden had physically hurt him, and the physical hurt wasn’t responding as it used to. Michael sighed, puffed again on his cigar, and noticing it was no longer lit, he took out his lighter and relit it, making sure he didn’t light his moustache or beard on fire.

He stood a while longer, savouring the last of his cigar, feeling pleased at how well his garden was growing despite the cooler mountain temperatures. Yes, he was pleased with his life this morning, he was pleased but also worried about the deteriorating physical condition of his shoulder. He decided there wasn’t much he could do about that right now. He would try as best he could to rest his shoulder, to ice it and put heat on it, but he also knew he needed to keep his body strong, and therein was the problem. How to do both was the issue, and could he do both was the question.

Michael had recently done a month of physical therapy for his shoulder which hadn’t really helped at all. What had helped the most was simply not using the shoulder but he couldn’t live here if he didn’t have the use of his shoulder. So, he decided he would go see an orthopaedic surgeon and hear what if anything could be done to alleviate the constant and sometimes excruciating pain he was experiencing.

Michael walked back into his cabin, and he decided to take a shower and get cleaned up.

Chapter 2

The weather, which had been sunny and warm for the past several weeks, suddenly turned cold and almost wintry. Several of his neighbours, who he saw during his almost daily two-mile walks, suggested he cover his garden to stop the coming frost from causing damage. Michael would listen patiently, and smile as he received the advice, but he had checked the weather forecast and he was pretty sure the frost wasn’t going to be an issue for his plants.

Of more worry to Michael though was the threat of hail. Hail could certainly cause damage to his young seedlings yet there was really nothing he could do except wait, watch, and hope. And as he watched one morning, and again while he watched that evening, first the snow came followed by hail. The good news for the garden was that the snow didn’t lie on the ground, and the other good news was that the hail didn’t last long and it didn’t cause any damage. Michael watched all this happening without any emotional concern for how nature was behaving. Nature would do what nature was going to do. Life here was as simple as that.

This wasn’t Michael’s first garden of course. He loved gardening and he simply had not had time to construct this one since he arrived a year ago. His garden had got relegated to the following year, which was now, and so he took time from his writing and built it. The days sun, even if it was not a full day’s sun, heated up the soil, and during the night the soil gave off the heat it had collected, which would stop any damage from the night’s cold. Indeed, during the heavy rains and cooler days, and even cooler nights, his corn had sprouted, and everything in his garden had visibly grown. Of course, once the days began heating up again, he knew the garden would grow much faster.

After the garden was planted, Michael had installed a drip system for watering, and he had attached that system to an automatic timer system. He could adjust the times it came on and he could adjust the duration that it watered. Every year he used the same automatic timer, and each year he changed the batteries so there was never an issue with it working properly. For now, it was off while it was raining, but before it rained, he had it on for ten minutes every twelve hours. Once the seeds sprouted, he planned to increase the time, but then it rained instead.

Once the rains stopped, he planned on waiting a day before turning the sprinkler system back on. The hard work was done and now the pleasant part was beginning. He had already weeded several times, using a hoe to uproot the young weeds. Michael would often laugh as he told his neighbours he had spent a couple hours that morning or afternoon with his hoe. Weeding was very pleasant for Michael as it not only made his garden look pretty and tended to, but it also gave him time to look at everything.

He would remove any small rocks that might be impacting his growing plants, he would check to make sure the sprinkler system was working properly and that the water lines were aligned correctly, he would check to see how deep the water was penetrating, and for now that was all he could really do. Michael would also talk to his garden.

Michael believed in talking to his plants, he believed in nature spirits, and he often invited nature spirits to help his garden grow. When he was much younger, and while travelling through Scotland one summer, he heard about a hippie commune. He had driven his Volkswagen van to their commune and he