As the year wears on toward an anniversary of September 11, 2001, many groups are planning or establishing memorials to those we lost. It seems Hempstead has established a garden at its Clark Garden site;

The Munsey Park Women's Club has created a garden at Waldman Memorial Field and the Village of Munsey Park has built a "walking garden" along the elementary school playing fields. Manhasset High School will soon have a garden of its own. Surely there are others. The wonderful thing about gardens is that they embody life. Unlike marble monuments, gardens are places where things grow and renew themselves. Those we have lost live on in our hearts and their memory is kept green in these gardens. You can kneel in a garden. You can sit and meditate and remember. You can pray. As poet Dorothy Frances Gurney wrote in her 1913 poem, God's Garden:

"The kiss of the sun for pardon,

The song of the birds for mirth,

One is nearer God's Heart in a garden

Than anywhere else on earth."

Requiescat in pace.

E.F.B.