"the background of the day"

"There are two parts to the common day, -- the performance of the day, and the background of the day.  Many of us are so submerged in the work we do and in the pride of life that the real day slips by unnoted and unknown.  But there are some who part the hours now and then and let the background show through.  There are others who keep the sentiments alive as an undertone and who hang all the hours of work on a golden cord, connecting everything and losing none; theirs is the full life; their backgrounds are never forgotten; and the backgrounds are the realities."
--Liberty Hyde Bailey, The Garden Lover

John Stempien, Museum Director, shared passages from the Liberty Hyde Bailey book entitled The Garden Lover with us this morning in the Brunch at Bailey's event.  The above quote was one of my favorites.  It had me thinking back into some of the background of my days as a child.  My parents owned a small cabin on Lake Superior.  We would drive there for the weekend after spending the week in the city of Minneapolis.  My parents refused to build a road into the cabin, so as not to disturb the plants and animals but also to leave the sight and sound of any car in the distance.  Walking the quarter mile or so to the cabin, the path took us right through a huge stand of ferns.  My brothers and I called that stretch of the path "The Land of the Giants," because by mid-summer the ferns were easily as tall as my head (I was 8 or 9 at the time).  It felt like we were walking through a jungle as we brushed back the tall fronds and made our way to our little escape on the lake.  And now, as I wonder through the backyard of our school on our garden path and look at the beautiful ferns beneath the trees, it brings me back to that magical land of the giants in my childhood and into the background of my days.  What a gift those woods and water were to me.

I wonder . . . what background do we give to our students?  How can we frame their days of education in beauty?  And wouldn't it be wonderful if we took the time to "part the hours now and then and let the background show through?"  And then maybe someday they will grow to "hang all the hours of work on a golden cord, connecting everything and losing none. . . "  That would be my dream for every student.

"The joy of flowers is of the backgrounds.  It lies deeper even than the colors, the fair fragrances, and the graces of shape.  It is the joy of things growing because they must, of the essence of winds woven into a thousand forms, of a prophetic earth, and of wonderful delicateness in part and substance.  The appeal is the deeper because we cannot analyze it, nor measure it by money, nor contain it in anything that we make with our hands.  It is too fragile for analysis."  --Liberty Hyde Bailey, The Garden Lover