Tanka: Kayak

Tanka: Clarity

a quick clear/liquid cool/light for light/crystal thought/into this deep

images and verse © Mary Ellen Gambutti

Dear Subscribers, Readers, Friends:

Now that both novellas are widely available in e-book, and soon to be in print, all but a few of the twelve serialized episodes of Through the Yew Hedge are archived. Thanks so much for generous support in the launch of the serial.

New readers may start their journey into the Series with several episodes I’ve kept available “Behind the Hedge:” Prologue, Silverton Foundations (Introduction), and “The Cedar Groves.” In addition, craft essays, lore, images, Celtic myth, as well as sample chapters of Through the Iron Gate will soon be found “Behind the Hedge.”

I invite you to continue into “The Garden and The Gate where the myth, legend, and background deepens and darkens Through the Iron Gate: The Rosemere Records.

Going forward, there will be a small subscription to enter “The Garden and the Gate” except for the first few posts which I’m thrilled to share for free.

Thank you for walking these garden paths with me.
I hope you’ll find some rare blooms here.

As it has been for the past few years, Roots and Branches remains free, with essays from an adopted person’s perspective, touching on identity, heritage, memory, and belonging.

For the full reading experience:
Through the Yew Hedge and Through the Iron Gate

THANK YOU!

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© Mary Ellen Gambutti 2026

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Wash Day

As a child, I shadowed my adoptive mother’s mother in her garden; was by her side at her Maytag wringer washer.

The laundry room was the unfinished side of our mid-century New Jersey basement, where Julia, my Nana, was in command of the Maytag wringer washer. Her husband, Mike, had bought it for her in 1928, to use on the front porch of their Pennsylvania clapboard house, and it was an improvement over a metal washtub in the yard.

When they left for New York City to find work around 1930, they brought the machine with them. Mike replaced the gas motor with electric so the Maytag could be placed in the tenement kitchen on West Broadway. A shallow, white-enamel roasting pan was still catching random oil drips in the 1950s through the early ‘70s, when the Maytag disappeared from our basement.

I was soothed by the rhythmic, soft clunk of the agitator against the simultaneous swish of suds. Nana gave me a small muslin bag of bluing to drop into the clear, cold rinse water on the right side of two attached concrete tubs, where the white socks swam. She soaked Granddaddy’s greasy pants in the soapy wash water that, she said, “extracts” from the black hose into the left tub. Nana watched me carefully feed socks into the wringer.

Sometimes she sang for me in a mournful voice while she worked,
Red River Valley, and

“Mother, oh, why did you leave me alone,
No one to comfort, no friends, and no home?
Dark is the night, when the storm rages wild,
God pity Bessie, the drunkard’s lone child...”

Nana declined to use the new Sears washer and dryer my parents purchased for the family home, preferring the old wringer washer and hanging the clothes outside, or in the cellar in the winter, or on a rainy day. She emerged onto the concrete stairs through the cellar screen door, and I followed. With her wringer-wrung wash in a vinyl-lined bushel basket hoisted onto her right hip, my slender, petite Nana climbed with strength and sure-footed determination.

Up in our lush backyard, I handed wooden clothespins to her. Some were spring-hinged; some resembled slender gingerbread people. She held a few extra clothespins between her lips as she hung the clothes. I copied her, holding one in my mouth, tasting and smelling the smooth wooden pin. Nana reached up to hang shirts, my playwear, and towels on the revolving, plastic umbrella lines.

On heavy wash days, Granddaddy’s work clothes were hung on a long rope fixed between two pin oaks. Here, Nana was far from the tarry, sooty air of her New York apartment roof, where clotheslines swayed between two metal poles. She was farther still from her country home, where she had learned these washday skills from her mother.

When I was nineteen, romancing the “back to nature” lifestyle, Nana gave me an oil lamp, washboard, ice cream churn, and one of her handmade quilts, her blessings toward the simple life shared from her rural upbringing.

Grove, Fork Shoals, South Carolina

I patched together a likely turn-of-the-century washday of my great-grandmother, Marie, from bits and pieces I gathered at the Lenderman-Cox reunion in October 1993, the fall I turned forty-two and met my mother. Until searching at forty, I knew nothing of my birth family.

Sun rises over farm fields, and she piles up dark hair, ties a crisp apron over her work-dress. Born November 1, 1858, brown-eyed, sturdy and tall, Marie, daughter of a Greenville, South Carolina farmer and Civil War soldier, William Lenderman, and his second wife, Marie assumes care of her father’s home upon her mother’s death. Marie marries neighbor, John Cox, a prominent farmer. With their own eleven children; among the brood, Frank, my grandfather, they raise Marie’s youngest siblings.

Washdays, boys haul well water to the galvanized tub on a wood fire in the yard. Marie and the older children scrub with washboard and hang laundry on lines. In winter, washing is done at the woodstove, hung to dry in the kitchen.
Marie bakes bread and pies in her wood-fired oven, preserves home garden bounty—okra to beans, and peaches. John contributes wheat and corn. Her daughters ride with her to Simpsonville market in a horsedrawn wagon.

A formal photograph of Marie and John shows her standing tall, serene, looking straight at the camera. She wears a long, black wool suit, and white chemise. She’s fair-skinned with a high forehead and cheekbones. Her left hand rests on John’s right shoulder, as he sits beside her. Her fingers are long, like mine.

Thanks for reading!

© Mary Ellen Gambutti 2026

The Silverton Foundations

The green valleys, rolling hills, and silvery morning haze reminded travelers of their beloved homeland glens. On this rich landscape in their adopted new land, they built a pretty village and set it like a Celtic knot in a deep curve of the northern bank of a fork in the Primrose River. In time, English ivy would clamber over the white stucco walls of their timber-framed houses, and horse hooves and wagon wheels would smooth the meandering cobblestone streets.

Elizabeth Silverton was born in 1832 to the daughter of a German publisher and a British industrialist. After a Fine Arts and Botany education in Britain, she chose academia over marriage and emigrated from England to North America. In 1867, her dream to create a botanical sanctuary became possible, and she purchased a partially deforested property on the Primrose River in New England. In partnership with her brother, she founded Silverton University, and they incorporated the Village of Silverton.

At The Silverton Estate, recent history overlaid ancient traditions, as exemplified in the School of Landscape Architecture and the Department of Medieval Studies. Across the red arched footbridge from the campus, the conservation-minded and creative visionary, Elizabeth, merged botanical science and a deep study of European medieval monasteries. She brought to bear her fine arts education, extensive travel in Celtic regions, and a penchant for landscape and garden design in consultation with artisan builders and professional landscape gardeners. The sprawling Tudor-style Manor House, medieval-style monastery garden, the cottages, expansive lawns, ponds, waterways, and remaining cedars would thrive. In turn, the Estate would come under the protection and care of the Department of Medieval Studies.

Sarah

Sarah Caldwell’s Bachelor of Science in Botany and Master’s in Medieval Studies from Silverton University shaped her distinctive scholarly approach. Her PhD dissertation, “Healing and Holiness: The Medicinal Codex of Medieval Monastery Gardens,” investigated how medieval healers embedded comprehensive medical knowledge within garden layouts, using systems that unified body and spirit.

Across the front of the property on Cedar Lane, a brick wall ended up in piers that supported a heavy Iron Gate, with a hanging plaque that read, “Please Keep Closed.”

On the icy mid-winter morning that Dr. Sarah J. Caldwell approached The Silverton Estate for an eleven o’clock appointment, her scholarly aspirations intertwined with enchantment. The gate latch stuck, and a thorny whip of a rebellious rose clambering over the brick piers lashed out, snagging her jacket.

Undeterred, Sarah shouldered into the gate. Its hinges groaned, and it gave way. As Sarah entered the threshold, the rose, though dormant, bloomed black.

James

“Careful of the thorns,” James Hawthorn, who stood on the shoveled path, warned her a bit late, but, on time for their meeting, he extended his wool-clad hand to Sarah.

“Great to meet you, James,” Sarah said, accepting his handshake. The Estate’s Archivist was dressed in corduroy slacks, a down parka, and sturdy snow boots. At thirty, he was five years younger than Sarah.

“I see you’re prepared for the tour,” James said, noting her knee-high footwear. “You’ll get a look at The Garden’s bones, if not their blooms. I think the designers call it ‘structure.’”

Sarah smiled, replying, “Indeed!”

James was not a designer, nor a horticulturist, but he was somewhat familiar with The Garden’s layout and features, having grown up on the Estate, the son of the groundskeeper. “I understand you’re in the thick of your book research. I’m at your service,” James said with a slight bow.

Early in her academic career, Sarah had held the Elizabeth Silverton Fellowship, and continued research into The Medicinal Codex of Gardens: A Medieval Monastic Pharmacopeia.

Sarah replied, “Thank you, James. I’ve studied the drawings, and I’m familiar with the garden’s evolution.”

The giant Yew Hedge had first obscured her view, but as they walked, and she squinted against the glare down toward the glistening silver herbs, she discerned the Monastery Garden’s geometry: tightly pruned and low, the evergreen boxwood hedge formed crisp, frost-glazed quadrants bisected by an earth-toned, sandstone walkway.

Amidst the wide winter landscape, Sarah visualizes the herbary in a colorful season, with all its shapes and textures. Purple and lavender spikes in contrast to the full, green leaves of lemon balm, the tall stalks of echinacea, and its cones of violet purple and vibrant pink against the bushy foliage.

The beds are dedicated to types of herbs and flowers; each of their healing properties is marked with miniature wooden signs, all meticulously organized. In one quadrant, a germander border contains rollicking herbs — more texture, structure, and purpose in Elizabeth Silverton’s Garden...

“What is that aura, or aroma — like pine — like rosemary?”

“Oh! You’ve picked up the scent of the ancient Cedars at the far reaches of The Estate,” said James, “remnants of the storied, primeval forest that emerged after the Ice Age. We’ve done our best to protect the fragment that Elizabeth Silverton willed to the University. Much wilderness was lost to speculators before she acquired and preserved the meadows, ponds, creeks, and trees, and built the Tudor Mansion.”

James continued to speak as they walked, “The University contracts with a small squad of conservationists. ‘Old Cedra,’ as she has been called, guides their choices and ways of protection. She’s been here forever in her primitive hut back in one of the Cedar Groves. Elizabeth was a master herbalist, and Cedra was an intellectual protégé of hers, I guess you could say...”

Sarah’s mind wanders to a melodic murmur, like whispered secrets across snowy tranquility, a gentle buzzing and whirring of wings, both near and echoed. She visualizes ancient healing powers of apothecary herbs, the concentrically circular beds, from the outermost layer of rosemary to the medicinal herbs, and at its heart, the Inner Sanctum.

Along the parterre paths, she encounters a bare-stemmed Black Rose in bloom, protected by the stone wall on which it climbs. She lifts a blossom to her face, the heady perfume of its deeply hued, reflective petals...

Sarah strolled like it was summer back to the Cedar Gate, where James stood swinging his arms and shuffling to keep warm. She said dreamily, “This is the perfect place for me to work on my book.”

As they crossed the Cedar Gate threshold under the Yew Hedge, James said, “The Estate has quite a history. But you’re familiar...”

Her somewhat detached reply was, “I see that the herbal Fairy Ring is thriving!”

James smiled at Sarah’s enthusiasm. “Elizabeth prized roses as symbols of love and devotion. A stone wall encloses her Rose Garden, with over a hundred varieties. It’s way at the back of the property, next to what was once Elizabeth’s private cottage, now in disrepair. No funding for its upkeep. My father, Charles, does keep the roses pruned, though. He’s the groundskeeper.”

Sarah again escapes the frozen landscape to revel in early alpine spring bulbs: crocuses, fritillaria, tiny species tulips, and jonquilla hybrids. As they pass the wide double borders, it’s summer, and the long, wide, Gertrude Jekyll-style borders are in bloom, tangled with old-fashioned hollyhocks, delphiniums, and foxgloves, edged in lady’s mantle, dianthus, and aquilegia...

“It’s wonderful that The Estate keeps up these traditional plantings. Tell me all you know, James.”

James continued, “Dad has a small crew to help with weeding and deadheading in the perennial borders, and with upkeep around The Estate. There’s plenty to explore when the weather warms.”

Charles

Wearing a green flannel jacket and brown overalls with thickly padded knees, he emerged with an aluminum snow shovel from behind the sprawling bare twigs of a bridal wreath spirea. A fringe of snow sprouted from the back edge of his plaid wool cap, and his frame was a bit bent.

James’s father introduced himself: “I’m Charles Hawthorn, and you’re a medievalist.”

Not a question... Sarah accepted his bare handshake, rough with age and from tending to the earth. “Hello, yes, I’m Sarah Caldwell. Pleased to meet you, Charles.”

“The Garden’s been waiting for you,” he said by way of welcome.

Sarah raised an eyebrow as the Groundskeeper continued, “We’re in the Keeper’s Cottage. Margaret and I have been here all our married lives. And you’ve met James, so you know he works for the University, too. You’re always welcome to stop by our home if you need anything. You do know the Manor House is empty...”

Again, not a question... Somewhat bemused, Sarah answered, “I’ve heard that.”

“The administration wants it to be occupied,” Charles said. “This old Estate needs a resident curator again.”

Although her interest was piqued, Sarah preferred nonchalance in response to Charles’s amiable but forward approach.

James piped up, “Most residents have been scholars, and many were connected to the Silverton family, though Miss Silverton... well, you must know...”

Sensing Sarah’s unease, James redirected, “Well, thank you for coming, Sarah. We’ll speak again soon.”

“Thanks for the lovely tour, James. And thank you, Charles.”

Charles saluted his reply.

“Well, I’m looking forward to making a start,” Sarah said privately to James, as he assisted her in clearing the gate and its unruly Black Rose.

“Bye!” She smiled as she pivoted right, toward the red arched footbridge over the Primrose to the campus. Born and raised in Silverton, Sarah had lived in a Village apartment for the past four years.

That afternoon, she would stop at her childhood home, several blocks from the campus, to visit her mother, Helen Caldwell. She wanted to weigh the benefits against the difficulties of living in a grand old Tudor-style home. She thought she heard The Estate call to her.

“Residency would enhance my position as curator. Living amidst the gardens and history of The Silverton Estate while I’m on sabbatical to write my book, I’d have access to the Silverton Archives.”

Sarah was captivated by the cultural symbols in the Medieval Monastic Gardens, the early texts, and mystical and pragmatic medieval botany.

Another project of hers was “Translating and Annotating a 13th-Century Herbal Manuscript.” The Silverton gardens would be a living laboratory for Sarah.

“Indeed, what a great opportunity!” Helen supported her daughter’s decision. The two were at a turning point. Helen’s husband, Robert Caldwell, a local architect, had passed away a year earlier. She and Sarah grappled with grief. Sarah, too, was faced with both decisions about her career advancement and her mother’s well-being. Helen was thinking about selling their family home, possibly renting an apartment near the campus. Suddenly, Sarah’s career path was clearer, and she could be persuasive.

“Mom, would you consider moving to the Manor with me? I’d apply to the realtor who handles The Estate, and maybe we can move in March. We both could find healing there.” The Estate on Cedar Lane presented the possibility of mutual renewal. “When Professor Winters suggested me for the Curator position, I didn’t realize the house was unoccupied. It feels like the ideal arrangement for both of us.”

Helen agreed with Sarah that she’d been spending too much time alone in their 1930s white colonial home behind the picket fence, and was excited for an enlivening adventure.

The Move

The inconvenience of packing and boxing was overshadowed by the excitement of moving across the Primrose River into the Silverton Manor.

“What great timing!” Helen said, arranging her folkloric research volumes. “My house sold three weeks after you were offered the curatorship.”

Charles Hawthorn voiced his approval of their move to The Estate: “The house has a special draw for artists and scholars. Elizabeth had certain stones shipped from a Welsh quarry to build one of the walls,” he told Helen, who, as a folklorist, was keenly interested.

Charmed by the Tudors’ quirky blend of elegance and eccentricity, Helen and Sarah planned to gently edge the grand main floor rooms of the spinster’s residence into an eclectic modern style by adding their furnishings to Elizabeth’s remaining Victoriana.

As Sarah planned, they were in at the start of spring and took to the rhythms of The Estate. Even the house seemed to unfold around them, its spaces inviting new purposes.

One morning, Sarah paused in the doorway of an upstairs room that had a long view out toward the gardens. “I considered placing our reference books here, but...” She trailed off, and Helen, observing her daughter’s dreamy expression, asked, “What do you think it should be used for?”

Sarah surprised herself with the words: “Maybe a child’s room.”

Over breakfast, Sarah’s thoughts crystallized. “The local adoption agency has a waiting list for foster parents,” she said, admitting she’d inquired. “I could be eligible to care for a child aged six to nine. Fostering an older child or two, I could continue researching and writing. They’d thrive in open spaces, learning about plants and gardens. And you’d have a ready audience for your stories, Mom.”

Possibilities flew back and forth across the breakfast table. Helen said, “You’ve always enjoyed taking on challenges.” She easily embraced the idea of a child in her life again. Sarah replied, “I think I’m ready.”

She contacted the agency, taking the first steps in the process of becoming a foster parent. There were forms and hard questions for the single, middle-aged female as a prospective parent. She was clear and earnest about her desire to provide a loving and caring home for a child. She was added to the waiting list.

Sarah’s new routine balanced her plant curator duties with her research into Elizabeth Silverton’s garden design and practical uses.

Years ago, as Elizabeth had stipulated, the University transferred what remained of Elizabeth’s archives back to The Estate. As its current archivist, James handled materials a few others had: her Herbarium, garden plans in watercolor and ink, personal correspondence, receipts, and architectural drawings. Now he welcomed Sarah’s botanical knowledge and Helen’s expertise. While Sarah traced The Garden’s evolution into the present, Helen pursued folkloric parallels, and James stitched their findings to The Estate’s historical record.

“Elizabeth’s bequest required that her papers stay with The Gardens,” James said, unlocking and opening a wood-and-glass case on a conference room wall. He lifted out a framed letter. “Here it is, the document establishing The Estate as University property, and Elizabeth’s intentions for The Gardens. Her vision.”

Sarah leaned closer and began to read aloud:

Bequest of Elizabeth Silverton

Spring Equinox, 1892

To the Board of Trustees, Silverton University, Department of Medieval Studies

It is with careful thought that I bequeath my Estate and Gardens to Silverton University, with the charge that they be maintained as a faithful recreation of Medieval Monastery Gardens. I intend these grounds to be a place of peace and contemplation, as the monks of old designed them, while preserving the rare botanical specimens I have gathered throughout my life.

The Garden’s design follows historical precedent in its quadrant structure, drawing from manuscripts of European Monastic Gardens. I ask that its integrity be preserved in perpetuity: the Concentric Herb Beds arranged according to apothecary principle, propagating the collection of uncommon plants.

I hope that The Gardens continue to serve both scholarship and solace, as a living document for students of history and botany, and a contemplative refuge for future generations.

I further request that all plans, drawings, and catalogues remain housed in the Manor’s Archives, for proximity to The Gardens, so that future curators may have recourse to the original records.

The accompanying endowment shall provide for the ongoing care, study, and preservation of this rare work.

With scholarly devotion,

Elizabeth Silverton

Sarah’s voice faded to a whisper, and James, respecting the moment’s stillness, said softly, “The Silverton Legacy. Sarah, with your background in Medieval Botany and Garden Design, you were well placed to continue Elizabeth’s work as Curator.”

“It’s an honor to be part of this Garden family,” Sarah replied, acknowledging her weighty commission.

Summer Walk

On a hot, bright afternoon, Sarah and Helen meandered down the brick pathway that bordered the perennial beds. “I’ve been looking over Elizabeth’s notes on medicinal properties,” Sarah explained. “I want to bring some of her approaches into my own methodology. Previous curators respected most of Elizabeth’s original plantings. I want to do more; to restore her botanical legacy.”

The towering ancient Yew Hedge marked the boundary between formal and informal spaces. Its topmost feathery foliage, where pruning shears seldom ventured, captured the midsummer sparkle. Helen ran her hand along the hedge’s tightly sheared profile, stopping at the rough-sawn cedar board gate with a high arch set snugly within the hedge.

At the start of his career as a groundskeeper, Charles had replicated Elizabeth’s Celtic gate, replacing the original at the request of the University. It was kept safe in the Archive’s storeroom with the aviary, also long out of commission.

“Perfectly maintained,” said Helen of The Yew Hedge, “yet Charles said it requires minimal trimming, as if...”

“As if it maintains itself?” Sarah completed her mother’s thought with a hint of skepticism. Yet, Sarah admitted she’d observed a few botanical oddities, “... Plants blooming out of season, unusual growth patterns...”

Helen smiled at her daughter’s cautious phrasing. “It seems that Elizabeth had an unconventional approach to horticulture. In her private social gatherings in the Manor House, she was quoted (off the record) that The Garden responded to more than soil chemistry and light conditions.”

Through the portal and onto the terrace, both women felt a shift in ambient temperature. The hedge, the brick wall on three sides, the warm sandstone paving, and the murmur of cooling water made a pleasant microclimate. The sheltered, cloister-style raised beds in quadrants that held precisely planted herbs were a highly structured yet aesthetically satisfying botanical display. It contrasted with the naturalistic perennial borders, wide meadow, marshes, ponds, streams, and forest. At The Garden’s central axis, the three-tiered Iron Fountain heightened the afternoon’s dazzle with its arched spray, and reflecting pool ripples and rainbows.

Helen and Sarah were relaxed, steeped in the magic of the afternoon, and pleased with their decision to accept The Estate’s challenges and enjoy its comforts. Heading back toward the House, Sarah mused, “Tomorrow I’ll revisit Elizabeth’s planting schemes and cycles, the living rhythms of The Garden, what stirs beneath the soil. To explore, even embrace her intentions and her purposes — beyond her official documentation.” Helen smiled in reply.

The last of the boxes could wait; Elizabeth Silverton’s Garden legacy had taken precedence.

By the end of their first summer on The Estate, Helen and Sarah were well settled. Sarah was immersed in research and discovery in The Garden. Helen enjoyed walks in green and paved spaces. She thought about her husband, Robert, who had some acquaintance with Silverton history, though not a medievalist. Helen felt sure he would have been pleased that his wife and daughter were living in an aesthetic environment surrounded by herbaceous plants and rare architecture. They had their choice of reading and recreational rooms with tall windows and comfortable seating.

Helen had taken up baking bread and cooking in the once forbidding AGA cooker, at first enlisting the aid of affable Margaret Hawthorn to demonstrate the fundamentals of the imposing combination gas-and-wood oven.

Their new way of life afforded new purposes, restfulness, and renewed companionship.

The Estate’s Arteries

Autumn’s cooling breath carried wet weather from the woodlands through The Yew Hedge and up to the Keeper’s Cottage and Manor House, and hearths were soon lit against the dampness.

The first heavy rains revealed aspects of Elizabeth’s design not apparent in the summer, so Sarah, James, and Helen donned ponchos and wellies, ventured onto the sodden lawns and gardens to witness The Estate’s water workings; the irrigation network extending from the Primrose River underground and out through the property.

At the windy northwest corner of the Medieval Garden, a series of carved stone gargoyles, the size of five-gallon jugs, had come to life, spouting rainwater from garish open mouths into a communal trough, draining discreetly into an intricate system of rills.

“This is a unified water management system,” Sarah explained, leaning where the stone channel disappeared under the greenhouse.

James produced a sketch of the original blueprints from his pocket to show Sarah and Helen. The trio eyed the damp paper; their umbrellas joined against the drizzle.

“According to these plans, seven main waterways run beneath the Medieval Garden, with thirty-two secondary veins branching off through the quadrants and perennial beds.”

Sarah’s blonde bangs clung damply to her forehead, and she separated the fringe, saying, “Perfect moisture balance, mostly gravity-fed.”

Helen examined the stone edge of the rill that trickled liquid life into the perennials. She traced the smooth, carved symbols: spirals, knots, and stylized eyes with her index finger. “They are similar to those in monastic water systems throughout medieval Europe in Celtic regions. Water, a threshold element, connects the visible and invisible worlds.”

Sarah noted, “Elizabeth documented certain plant species thriving regardless of conditions. She classified plants not only by sunlight and soil preferences, but by their relationship to the water flow here, some, marked as threshold, positioned where water emerges or disappears.”

The three colleagues followed the main rill to the central fountain, where water burbled through stone basins before flowing outward along four channels aligned with the cardinal directions. The fountain featured carved Celtic knots intertwined with Elizabeth’s Herbarium motifs.

Sarah noted that the fountain water level stayed even despite rainfall accumulation. “It’s a regulating system. Overflow is channeled and redirected to drought-sensitive areas or out to the lawns.”

From the lip of the bottom basin, excess water spilled over and into four channels. Helen said they represent the four rivers of paradise.

“Remarkable precision,” Sarah’s voice held a trace of awe, “when you observe Iris and water mint arranging themselves in the channels, adjusting their growth patterns to seasonal water flow.”

As the rain intensified, James said, “Dad mentioned his predecessor instructed him against tampering with the water channels, even if they seemed to malfunction. ‘The Garden corrects itself.’”

“I’d dismiss such a statement, except for what I’ve seen,” Sarah said. “Elizabeth seems to have designed a responsive arterial system where The Garden’s structure reacts to subtle changes in the environment with organic intelligence.” She murmured, Water as a medium between worlds.

Helen replied, “Elizabeth surely knew that the monks made use of water as the life of their gardens, and that if properly channeled, it is more than hydration for plants. It is communication.”

Sarah’s journal entry that evening was a nod to her new awareness:

The water system functions with remarkable efficiency during heavy rainfall. Plant response continues to defy conventional explanations.

Notable: Morning glories appear at junctures where water emerges from underground channels. Helen’s interpretation of symbolic carvings suggests deliberate integration of water as a threshold element. Consider: Elizabeth’s water system may serve functions beyond irrigation — possibly creating conditions for what she termed in her notes “permeability between states.”

Sarah’s botanical expertise could not have prepared her for events three months later at mid-winter.

end of introduction.

To read the full novella:

Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic

By Islay Corwin

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©Mary Ellen Gambutti 2026

The boy from first grade lived in the local orphanage. His visit has stayed with me since 1958, part of a medley of instructions. I was learning that family could be undone as easily as it was made

Saturday morning before Easter, Dad helps a little boy, who holds a brown paper bag, out of our Buick. Mom and I have stepped outside to greet them. Dad introduces Arlen to Mom and me. He is from the big stone orphanage next to our elementary school. We’re all smiling and saying hi, and I see Arlen’s two front teeth are missing, like mine. He’s so little, probably six like me, and his voice is small and southern. He talks like other kids in my class, the ones I’ve met of over fifty boys and girls in first grade.

I got my long ringlets cut off in New York after kindergarten, because Mom said it would be hot down here. Dad is in the Air Force, and left for Tokyo after we moved to Victoria. He stayed there for ten months, while I stayed here with Mom to go to school.

When I turned six, Dad told me I was adopted as a baby. He said that he and Mom wanted a baby, so they brought me home to their apartment in South Carolina. Dad said my big baby doll should be named Michael, the name he said he would have given a baby he wanted to keep, the boy in the crib next to me in the infant home. I wondered if Dad meant he wanted the boy instead of me. Dad is back now until we move again. Maybe Arlen will stay with us.

That afternoon, Arlen and I take turns riding the new blue bicycle Dad got me. When we get hungry, Mom calls us in for baloney sandwiches and glasses of milk. Later that evening, she cooks supper. We say grace and eat like we’re family. I’m happy, and Mom, Dad, and Arlen look happy too.

At bath time, Mom helps me. Then Dad helps Arlen run his water to take his bath. Arlen brushes his teeth with the toothbrush from his paper bag. He also has P.J.’s and a small square blanket in his bag, but Mom says he can wear the pajamas with the cowboys she has for him. He climbs into the pull-out couch she made up for him with sheets, a blanket, and a pillow. We say goodnight, and I get into my bed and wish. I’ll never be lonely if Arlen lives with us.

Dad takes pictures of Arlen, me, and Mom in our Easter clothes, standing beside our brick duplex. Big baskets with green synthetic grass hold foil-wrapped chocolate bunnies, and dressed-up cloth bunnies: a girl for me and a boy for Arlen. We hold our baskets up for the picture. His plaid shirttail keeps coming out of his trousers. Maybe, if I wish hard enough. I know Mom would take good care of Arlen. She could buy him clothes for church, school, and play. We could be like brother and sister.

After Mass, we eat bacon and eggs, then our chocolate bunnies. We hide and hunt plastic eggs filled with jelly beans. I love Arlen and hope he’ll live with us. We might have wished it together.

Dad and Arlen get back into the Buick early Monday morning. Mom says he must return to “the home,”and tells me to say goodbye. My hot tears fall, and I’m disappointed that Arlen isn’t staying. “Arlen’s sad. It’s not right to send him back,” I say. My parents don’t explain.

What if I have to go to the orphanage? Why didn’t Arlen work out? Will I see him again? What if it doesn’t work out for me, either? Why did Arlen get put in there? Could I be returned? My “real” mother is dead. Everyone disappears.

END.

Thank you so much for reading!

This essay was first published in Permanent Home: A Memory Collection

M new collection, holding the early years, is now in e-book form:

Neither Here Nor There: A Memoir in Essays

I’ll be sharing more excerpts from the collection here in Roots & Branches, and vignettes not directly related to adoption, in Seasons.

Whether you’re a long-time subscriber or have just signed up, your voice is important. I’d love to hear from you.

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© Mary Ellen Gambutti All Rights Reserved

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Welcome to Through the Yew Hedge, a lyrical work of magical realism infused with gothic atmosphere, botanical lore, and the disquiet of hidden histories.

About the Story

At the Silverton Estate, a secluded world of cedar groves, hidden libraries, medieval gardens, and forgotten archives, her adoptive mother, Sarah, a botanist and curator, has spent years documenting these “anomalies” without explanation.

Guided by three ancient guardians and drawn ever deeper into the Estate’s concealed histories, Stella must confront the fracture at the center of her life. To survive, she must reclaim the selves adoption divided: Ruth Ann and Stella, science and enchantment, loss and love.

Blending magical realism with the emerging shadows of gothic dark academia, Through the Yew Hedge explores identity, legal erasure, inherited memory, and the systems that shape belonging.

Thank you!

Books 1 and 2 of the Silverton Estate Duology
can be read as standalones. Now widely available in e-book format.

The Silverton Estate Duology

Through the Yew Hedge

Through the Iron Gate

©Mary Ellen Gambutti 2025-2026

Adoptees may yearn for the memory of what was lost. The ancestry, the past that came before us. The safety before the severing. We grieve before the returning. Or that we cannot return unless we have the key.

There was a time when I tended a formidable garden. I didn’t have language for this garden of mirrors, but I now express it as a void. My garden was absence. Loss. Bewilderment. My garden was identity confusion. In it, mirrors returned my gaze, offering reflection without recognition. Unanswered questions grew like weeds.

Long after I searched for my natural mother, I encountered the phrase, fog of adoption. Our reunion brought us new roles, but not clarity. I saw in her no regret, she was thrilled I cared to look for her. Proud how I turned out. But in her face, was the fog of effort. She was trying to remember. “Did you hold me?” I asked. She say she could not. The fog was hard at work. She’d always wondered…

After the thoroughness of her forty-year absence, the year we had together fell short. The cruel rupture; the imprint of relinquishment, caused irreparable loss. The disorientation. Displacement. The fog of adoption is a literal metaphor: the sealing of birth and adoption records ensures obscurity, denies our origins, and erases our ancestry. It covers the mirror, against the traits and tendencies that tell us who we are.

The metaphor found its way into a piece of my prose poetry, Haibun: Mirrors of Loss, first published in HumanKind Literary Journal. Stella’s voice now resonates in Through the Yew Hedge, distilling the fog of adoption into a single image.

Haibun: Mirrors of Loss

I can talk about how my mother surrendered me. Although a newborn, I knew. It mattered. She held me for nine months and in her arms for a brief hello. When I learned Sarah was not my first mother, I asked, “Will you leave me, too?” I worried, “Who will take care of me?” I dreaded a final separation. Ultimate loss: loss of self. I must have caused this pain of separation. Unwanted. Unworthy. With no one person to see in the mirror — no likeness. When I found my birth mother, I felt the wow of reunion, recovery, and self-realization. My fears abated in the knowing; maybe her fears did, too. Lessened, never lost.

Haiku
A sheer scrim ripples
over a girl’s image —
waking to now.

The fog of adoption and the mythic mists of the Celtic Otherworld obscure reality like a veil. In Celtic tradition, thin places are locations where the boundaries between the visible and invisible worlds are permeable. Mist-hung lakeshores. The Yew Hedge. Places where the hidden presses close to the surface. Stella’s Mentor, Cedra, has deep understanding of the inherted trait of mirror-walking, and of the power of memory in the ancient Cedar Groves.

Celtic seers used reflective surfaces to glimpse beyond ordinary sight, perhaps with water in a dark bowl, or in the still, mirroring surface of a sacred well at dawn. The practice, scrying, required safe training and the right conditions. This is the mythic tradition behind Stella’s mirror-sight, where her wound is a gift to be developed under Cedra’s protection. She offers training and safe passage through the permeable mists of Stella’s lost heritage.

© Mary Ellen Gambutti

Islay Corwin

Mary Ellen Gambutti writes memoir and personal essays as herself, and lyrical fiction as Islay Corwin, author of the Silverton Estate duology.

Mary Ellen Gambutti

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Both titles are widely available in e-book. More formats coming.

Through the Yew Hedge

Through the Iron Gate

THANKS!

As a writer and a former garden designer, I’ve always felt the memory of old landscapes. Paths invite, redirect, and sometimes warn us away. This story grew from those ideas: thresholds, inheritance, secrets, locked and opened gates, and the living architecture of place. I’m excited to be sharing these landscape gardens and stories that live in the myths.

Gothic Botanical Fiction & Dark Academia

Both novellas are set on the grounds, in the gardens, and within the dwellings of an historic New England estate. An estate that’s more than a backdrop. Cedar groves hold ancient memory. Herb quadrants follow a medieval cipher. The iron fountain marks solstice lines. Roses root themselves where grief has been.

The shadow of Silverton University runs through both books: scholarly characters who document, classify, and, in certain cases, deliberately conceal. A Medieval Studies College. Hidden archives in Tudor basement vaults. An abandoned cottage sealed for a century, its botanical records intact, its secrets undisturbed.

Stella, in search of her origins in Book One, moves through enchanted gardens and threshold spaces. In Book Two, secrets that the Estate has concealed, cipher and herbaria, inherited silence of institutions: what they preserve, and what they bury. Gothic fiction rooted in the soil. Dark academia; scholarly, with dirt under their nails.

The Silverton Estate Series, written by Islay Corwin.
(pen name of Mary Ellen Gambutti.)

Widely available in e-book format.

Book 1. Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic
Book 2. Through the Iron Gate: The Rosemere Records

© Mary Ellen Gambutti 2026

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PROLOGUE

The Foretelling

Under the stark flicker of fluorescent lights, white moths flutter cryptic scripts: What does Virgo portend? The prophecy of place and time, the raison d’être? She, the child of changing seasons, was pushed into the Autumn Equinox, delivered in sorrow on the first day of fall under a sapphire sky, on the cusp of Libra, the Just.

The bus ticket vibrates in Ellen’s coat pocket, her choice like the weight of lead: an escape, a remedy, but not a salvation. She trembles as she sets the baby basket behind the farthest bench, out of the cold gusts of wind that rush across the concrete platform.

She pins her plea, penned in loss and stained by tears, to the Mercy Shelter baby blanket: Protect Ruth Ann, Sweeten her life. She places a memory, a kiss like honey and salt on the infant’s forehead.

The Taking

Three elvish figures, wearing sparkling silver and green, emerge through the ticket-booth surveillance mirror, luminous and clear in their purpose.

Ellen shudders at their chiming voices. Familiar and foreboding, they stand full height around her baby. She knows them from shiny surfaces, reflections, in the shelter where they cajoled her until, distraught, she acquiesces to their coaxing in the twilight.

Your baby will be safe, she’ll be found, assures Eleris. In the ancient garden, she’ll come into her heritage, predicts Cedra. Under the human’s care, under our vigilance, she shall blossom. She’ll bridge worlds, promises Selwyn.

Accepting she is flawed and cannot be a proper mother, Ellen turns to board the waiting bus.

Hurry! Harmful fumes! They shriek, they shape shift, they shrink. They lift the baby in her basket, disappear into the reflective portal, and float on the Winter Solstice breeze to the Garden where blue morning glories bloom in the snow.

The complete story is available as an ebook:
https://books2read.com/ThroughtheYewHedge

Welcome to Roots & Branches

I’m glad you found your way here.

• Roots & Branches where I write personal essays from an adopted person’s perspective. You’ll find excerpts from Neither Here Nor There: A Memoir in Essays, my new collection on permanence, identity, loss, and belonging from an adoptee’s childhood to age fourteen.
  
  Over time, this newsletter has grown and diversified, and sprouted new offshoots. I invite you to explore the links:
  
  https://www.melandislay.com/newsletters
  

• Seasons follows the turning of the year in poetry and vignettes that move through the natural world and the inner one. Japanese poetic forms: haiga, shahai, haiku, haibun, prose poems. Vignettes and nostalgia.

• Behind the Hedge
  Here, lies the world of the Silverton Estate, world-building, craft, lore, reflections on writing literary magical realism, fae guardians, botanical and adoptee-centric fiction. Three excerpts from Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic are included.

• The Garden and the Gate (paid)
  Wander further into this new section for essays around Book 2 of the Silverton Estate Series. This is the inner garden, for readers who want to read about the botanical traditions in the novellas, the perennial and herb gardens, the Medieval-style monastery garden, apothecary, waterways, the Celtic myth, lore, and symbolism, and the ancient Welsh healing traditions of the Physicians of Myddfai. I’m not a scholar, but have a bardic soul.

About my Work

As Mary Ellen Gambutti, I have published several memoirs and essay collections, including Neither Here Nor There, I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls and Fortitude’s Footing: Coming to Terms With Stroke. My work has appeared in many literary journals. Available widely in ebook format.

The Silverton Estate Duology written under Islay Corwin, is widely available in ebook, and is coming soon in paperback and hardcover.

Universal book link:
Through the Yew Hedge
Through the Iron Gate
and Amazon

Islay Corwin writes lyrical fiction that honors the complexity of adoption and identity formation through the magic and myth of both the worlds we inherit and the worlds we choose.

(pen name of Mary Ellen Gambutti)

Join me on this journey between myth and memory.

I’m so pleased you’re here. Pull up a chair.
Mary Ellen

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© Mary Ellen Gambutti All Rights Reserved

As an adopted person, I know what it is to hold multiples: belonging and separation, chosen and relinquished, love and gratitude alongside loss and disenfranchised grief. These contradictions are the lived reality of adoption. The morning glories were the Estate's impossible certainty. Every Winter Solstice they appeared in the snow, defying explanation while refusing doubt.

Without the language of psychology, I have something else: metaphor.

Through the Yew Hedge was my attempt to make visible the fragmentation that relinquishment creates for both infant and mother, and to explore how secrecy, sealed records, and concealed origin stories ripple through the entire Adoption Triad.

My own adolescence was marked by identity bewilderment; a sense of living between worlds that many adoptees recognize. The phrase “identity crisis” floated through popular culture. I internalized it, but it never quite explained what I was felt. Without the confidence or support to speak about my distress, I carried the pain privately, feeling guilt and shame for being unknowable, unidentifiable, an imposter. Many adoptees recognize this feeling of being neither here nor there.

Duality Magic
Young adoptee, Stella, sees other worlds in mirrors. Plants respond to her emotions. She discovers she exists in two worlds. These aren’t signs of pathology; her identity is fragmented. Her sensitivity is heightened. But these are manifestations of her dual heritage. The language of the inner world and the otherworld allowed room for mystery without sacrificing emotional truth.

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At eighteen, it was an idealized freedom, a rustic time among trees, mountain vistas, the breath of sky and earth. Nature held me close to rapture. The power of an alternate ritual held more sway than an uncertain maker, raw euphoria rather than the negotiation of worship, and an unsettled reverence. We were, after all, free, flower children. The roar of Castle Creek and passing peers in Aspen. All the fixings for Meusli in jars. Bird song and a singing heart. In that illusory moment, I only received. Much later, I might learn to return the blessing.

My life in gardens —
Was it an escape?
Or deeper digging?

©Mary Ellen Gambutti 2019, 2026

A version of this Haibun or prose poem was published in the 1st issue of Human/Kind Journal, January 2019
Pushcart Nominee

***

The Announcement

February 19, 1952

Dear Lt. and Mrs. Caffrey: Here is good news! Baby Ruth Ann will be waiting for you in the Infant Home as soon as you tell us you can conveniently make the trip to Rock Hill. She was born on September 21, 1951, and is nearly five months old. She has brown eyes and dark hair and weighs about fourteen pounds. The baby’s nationality background is predominantly Irish and English…

***

Recording of Mom at age 96.

Tape clip 1.
“Dad’s family had a dairy farm in Saltillo, Pa. I remember a cave in the hillside where they stored milk and jarred goods. A stream ran through the cave…”

As soon as you feel that you can make the trip to Rock Hill, let us know so that we will be able to notify Sister Mathia of your coming. She will release the baby to you on any weekday between the hours of 10:00 and 10:30 or 2:00 and 2:30. The afternoon is the only convenient time on Sunday.

Tape clip 2.
“Mom, Dad, my brother, Vincent, and I lived in Orbisonia. Vincent was afraid of Dad’s horse. Vince had a nightmare the horse was down in the yard eating the dog. Once, Dad brought the horse into the house as a joke. It scared Vince to death…”

When you go to Rock Hill, you will go directly to St. Philip’s Hospital, which is on Confederate Avenue. Sister Mathia will go with you across the street to the Infant Home. You will want to take to Rock Hill whatever clothing you want the baby to travel in.

Tape clip 3.
“We moved to New York City on West Broadway in the Village when the coal mines closed in 1928. I went to school near Washington Square Park. I jumped rope in the street and played on the roof of Dad’s auto repair shop across the street. We moved to W.58th Street, across from Roosevelt Hospital, when I started high school. It was nice to live so close to Central Park.”

We suggest also that you bring a couple of sterilized bottles for feedings and a well-scalded thermos bottle in which Sister can put some of the baby’s formula.

*****

I remember Agnes…
1. gave up her nursing career to be an Air Force officer’s wife and adopt me,
2. played popular music on the radio on the kitchen counter, everywhere we lived.
3. laughed out loud at the TV comedy shows.
4. sat on the floor with me and played picture card games: Rustler, Old Maid, Fish.

One of our requirements during probation is that you send us a report letter each month. This is most important. If we have not anticipated all the questions you might have, just let us know when you tell us that you are going to make the trip.
With all good wishes,
Sincerely

*****

I remember Agnes…
5. was an excellent seamstress, sewed clothes for me and my dolls. She knitted and quilted, and we hooked wool rugs on canvas stretched on lap frames.
6. was a country girl at heart, always had a small breed dog, except when we were overseas. She loved the flora and fauna: exotic insects like praying mantids, and fed the rhinoceros beetles jam on bread when we lived in Japan. She tolerated the tadpoles I raised in pond water on my dresser and helped me locate the escaped mini fogs when they scattered.

Tape clip 4.

“My diary is falling apart. Kept it from 1939-1941 when I was sweet on Al and when we were courting. Not easy to love a seminarian. He left the Paulist Brothers in Baltimore to marry me. His mother pushed him to be a priest. You have no idea what a vamp I was! I went down to DC to visit Cousin Elsie and Aunt Katherine, and we took him out to dinner. But I never kept him from doing what he wanted to do. We married after the war, then he enlisted in the Air Force.”

I Remember Agnes…
7. was lonely when Dad was away on duty.
*****

Thanks so much for reading and for your continued support.

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Mary Ellen

© Copyright Mary Ellen Gambutti 2026

A version of this Zuihitsu appeared first in Atlas Poetica, a Journal of Poetry of Place in Contemporary Tanka ed. by M. Kei.

Zuihitsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zuihitsu is a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author’s surroundings […] Thus, works of the genre should be considered not as traditionally planned literary pieces but rather as casual or randomly recorded thoughts by the author

Bloom Begins

Reflection

Although it's not haiga, I want to share this lovely Ukiyo-e print which seems to borrow the spirit of haiku:
Seasonal reference (kigo): iris for early summer,
Single moment in time,
Nature and human harmony,
Visual restraint instead of explanation.

Ogata Gekkō (1859–1920) was working during the ‘opening to the West’ late Edo/Meiji bijin-ga, late 19th century. The traditional ukiyo-e style print, with the combination of a loose calligraphic signature, the red seal (hokka), the painterly and atmospheric print, and muted, watercolor-like pallette.

“A Beauty with Irises” (likely from the series comparing women to seasonal flowers.) Bijin hana kurabe – shōbu - Japanese iris, associated with early summer.

Resonance

Impermanence

She keeps the pearls
for her daughter -
butterfly in the wind.
- MelG

---

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© Copyright Mary Ellen Gambutti 2026

Hello, Readers, Friends ~ I hope this note from Beyond the Hedge finds you well.

In my March 30th post Where Worlds Meet, I wrote about my foray into “the in-between” from an adoptee’s standpoint, in my novella, Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic. Somewhere in that crossing from memoir to fiction, I began to understand something about integration, from the Fae, from Ruth Ann-Stella-Questa, and from how we are restored and find ourselves.

The Yew Hedge is the mysterious threshold where origins blur, and ancestral memories live just beyond reach. For adoptee Stella, the Medieval Garden, where cultivated quadrants meet wild cedar groves, is her place of integration. Two landscapes exist in relation to each other: the rational, ordered rows of herbs representing her adoptive life, and the Cedar Forest Fae, her otherworldly guardians, who carry her origins.

Wholeness is not choosing one over the other. It is becoming the gardener who walks between them.

Three things a healer must hold: the root that is hidden, the water that remembers, and the wound that does not speak. For not all illness declares itself, and not all cures are without cost.

In the tradition of the Welsh 13th-century Physicians of Myddfai, healing was a relational act between the visible and the invisible. Helen’s observation in the novel that “water is a threshold element” mirrors the adoptee’s unique position — at the border between the “Otherworld” of their origins and the empirical reality of their upbringing.

For an adoptee, the “empirical” is the life that can be seen and accounted for: their legal name, their adoptive family, their cultural environment. The “mythic intuition” reflects the more spectral connection to biological origins and ancestral inheritance; present, but not fully accessible. Just as the Myddfai physicians merged herbal knowledge with unseen understanding, the adoptee is asked to hold both lived experience and what precedes it, allowing something coherent to emerge over time.

As the estate’s arteries suggest, wholeness is not a static destination. It is the permeability between worlds, the courage to let the water of one’s history flow through the stone of one’s present. As with our heroine, the work is complex.

Ruth Ann. Stella. Questa.

The adoptee must bridge disparate worlds to achieve wholeness; to integrate their lived experience with the “Otherworld” of their pre-adoption history to form a cohesive identity. Her oral tradition is fractured, so she takes up the act of telling, writing the story in her own language. Finding metaphors to make it live in the present.

What appears ornamental, a certain tilt of the head, a specific affinity for the garden, a recurring dream, is rarely a mask. Like Elizabeth’s hidden irrigation network, these are the connections between what has been divided.

Integration is the recognition that we are the medium through which these stories flow. We are in the garden corner, where the archivist’s facts and the folklorist’s myths finally meet, carrying a heritage that, though it cannot be held in one place alone, sustains the entire estate of the self.

Sanatio is the Latin word for healing and restoration. The Physicians of Myddfai understood healing through three interwoven ways of knowing:

Revelation — knowledge received rather than discovered, carried across unseen thresholds. Stella, the half-fae adoptee.

Observation — the natural world studied with care, patterns learned through attention and time. Sarah, the scientist.

Virtue — the ethics of the healer, and the participation of the patient, shaping what knowledge can become. Helen, the keeper of the story, understands that how knowledge is held matters as much as what is known.

Thank you for reading! If you’re familiar with Through the Yew Hedge or following the journey, what role do gardens play in your life? What does “sanatio” mean to you? What systems have you discovered moving beneath the visible ones in your own life? If you are an adopted person, are there stories or myths that resonate or hold importance to you? We welcome you to drop us a note.

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© Copyright Mary Ellen Gambutti 2026

We had decided to give in to our protesting backs and retire my gardening business, to live where property maintenance would no longer be our direct concern. Fifteen years earlier, we had carved beds and borders into a blank slate of lush green lawn, planting perennials, roses, cut flowers, and flowering shrubs.

We found a New York buyer with little, if any, gardening experience, but who seemed willing to try. We found homes for our three Nigerian Dwarf goats and a healthy flock of fancy hens, and moved from our bucolic setting to live small.

In our new condo life, rules required that planting be strictly limited to the “mulch beds.” But we were not content with the builder’s lackluster shrubs and were determined to have our flowers. We reshaped the tiny beds around our unit and added rich organic compost to soil stripped of its top layer.

My gardening business had afforded me aesthetic freedom to design pleasing plant combinations on large estates and suburban gardens. Now I was faced with whittling a long wish list down to what would thrive in this small space.

Many perennials, hardy plants that increase from year to year, bloom for only two to three weeks. Some, like coreopsis, bloom all summer if sheared after the first flush. The challenge is to select flowers for the longest bloom period, and shrubs that stay small while offering texture and color. Pods and seed heads from iris and black-eyed Susan extend interest into fall and even winter, if not cut back until spring.

Snowdrops for late winter, crocus, and miniature tulips for early spring. Small gardens call for diminutive plants. A cottage garden is composed of informal, old-fashioned favorites. Among my summer choices were dianthus, perennial geraniums in mauve, pink, and blue, and campanula, the lovely bluebells. Fall brought the quiet beauty of dried hydrangea blooms.

Getting familiar with exposure, the variations in sun and shade, helps guide selection. Which plants will hold through heat, humidity, or drought? Which are suited to a smaller scale? Smaller gardens ask new questions.

I like to create vignettes to be enjoyed up close. Annuals fill gaps until perennials mature. A brief bloom can be placed beside a generous neighbor, or against steady green foliage, so there are no empty spaces in the picture. Knowing the mature size of each plant helps the garden maintain its balance. Repetition of color and form gently guides the eye through the space.

For us, gardening is therapy. We take pleasure in the sun, air, and the smaller tasks. Grooming plants, removing faded leaves and spent blooms, encourages what comes next.

Crocus --
the soil awakens
in tiny gestures

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© copyright Mary Ellen Gambutti 2016, 2026

Late Winter Gardening
Mary Ellen Gambutti

As St. Patrick’s Day approaches, my anticipation heightens with periodic bursts of mild air. Each day, a strengthening sun calls crocuses and daffodils to rise. No matter that there are still snow patches at the end of March, they cool and temper a day that turns suddenly too warm. I peel off layers of down and wool as activity warms me.

It’s time to begin. Time to start in the garden. I know what I’ll do first. Leaves, having lain in moist beds since autumn rains, oak and maple matted and stuck to frosted soil, can be pulled off in small sheets. Nothing is more delightful than revealing strong yellow-green growth, the musty smell of humus. Even wearing neoprene, I feel the slight bite of fingertips on part-frozen earth. I resist gloves, preferring direct contact in all seasons, but late winter tasks demand them.

Warmth settles on my back as I crouch along the border, still stiff from the winter couch. I know it will be weeks before I freely maneuver through the beds, hauling soil and mulch, planting, before the need for water returns.

With this bed free and breathing, I pull my Felco pruner from my jeans pocket and move to clip the Perovskia, Russian sage, dried, bleached, still faintly fragrant. Left to bloom out its blue scraggle and twist, now leaning and broken from months of snow, I shape it back toward its base, to any new pale growth along the stems, as I would lavender. If there is nothing but wood, I go further, to the bottom tuft of green. By May, it will be full and fragrant in the breeze.

These tasks bring joy, to feel the life around me, the life within me. Snipping rose bushes encourages April growth. I recall how: just above a five-leaflet leaf. How deep the satisfaction in simple actions that will create blooms. And again, more bloom, if, in a month, the work is repeated.

towering tulip tree
buds dance in the breeze,
trill of a pine warbler

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Writing a story about fae and the adoption system, Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic, I found that magical realism and Celtic traditions offered fertile ground for the myths around identity and belonging, Stella’s story. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

My father was one of five sons of Irish immigrants to New York City. He shared recordings of traditional music with me. My mother surrounded me with British and European fairy tales, folklore, and fables. I learned to read inside those worlds. I still do.

Many years later, a DNA test revealed my ancestry is rooted in England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. My full-length memoir explores what it means, as an adopted person, to learn and live in both my native and acquired heritage, and whether it is possible to accept both as gifts.

As a retired landscape gardener, I have long felt the deep connection between humans, wild, and cultivated spaces. We ignore that relationship at our peril. The Silverton Estate imagines a world where such liminal spaces are honored. Elizabeth Silverton’s work as a botanist, herbalist, garden designer, and medieval historian draws from British horticultural traditions and medieval monastic gardens. Sarah Caldwell follows in her footsteps, making the Estate her home and living laboratory. Sarah’s scientific approach and Cedra’s Magic are part of Stella’s life, not in opposition, but somewhat in dialogue.

In the worldview and practice of the eminent 13th-century Myddfai Physicians of Wales, Rhiwallon the Physician and his sons, healing takes place when ways of knowing are aligned with the empirical and the intuitive, the botanical and the spiritual, the rational and the mystical. Although boundaries between the supernatural and human world exist, they are permeable, with various consequences. The Myddfai Physicians were descended from the Lady of the Lake, according to the legend.

I am not a folklorist like Helen, nor an herbalist. I approach these traditions with respect, while also trying to tell a truthful story about adoption from an adoptee’s perspective; about the systems that act on human lives.

Stella’s gifts are real. Her half-fae heritage is linked to the Tuatha Dé Danann, a mythic people of Ireland with the skills of demi-gods, artistry, and druidic magic. After a final battle, they retreat into the Otherworld, where they are transformed into the Irish fairy folk. Their legacy is chronicled in The Invasions, set down by Medieval Catholic clerics, offering the Irish a sense of origin, identity, and belonging.

In the novella, the Fae Council: Cedra, Selwyn, and Eleris are complex, capricious, and unreliable. Cedra’s training method is bizarre, but Stella needs her guidance, like she needs Sarah’s observations and notes. They both seem to have a benevolent aim: to see Stella as a whole person.

Celtic tradition recognizes the power of naming, and of holding more than one truth at once. Either-or thinking can fracture identity. We are complex, nuanced. Imperfect. Can’t be fixed. Ruth Ann, Stella, Questa. Three names, dual nature, one life.

Thank you for reading,

I’d love to hear from you. What resonated? What did I leave out? How do we honor traditional stories while also shaping new ones?

Have you read the novella, either in the series on Substack or the ebook?

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In the Attic Mirror
It ripples, responding to me the way it has since I was ten, in another hallway, another room in this house. I am thirteen now.

The attic air hangs heavy with dust. I’ve ventured up the narrow stairs after midnight, drawn by a humming that no one else seems to hear. In the far corner stands an uncovered mirror in an ornate silver frame. I expect my reflection. I dread the distortions I’ve seen since I was ten.

A half-moon casts its light through a dormer window. The mirror’s surface ripples like disturbed water. The attic behind me disappears, replaced by a small room I’ve never seen.

A woman sits by a window. Her copper-bright hair catches the light. She is working on a bracelet of blue forget-me-nots. I can only see her profile, but the curve of her cheek, the shape of her hands —

Ellen.

The name comes from nowhere and everywhere.

She looks up. Has she heard me? Her eyes — my eyes — widen as she stares at me through the glass. She reaches toward the surface, and her fingertips leave fog-like impressions. She is in the mirror. She is in her room. And she is in the attic with me.

Then we are disconnected. Like a phone line cut.

The mirror clears. My own reflection returns, and I see what I first noticed at age ten: a woman weaving an enchanted forget-me-not bracelet without knowing her name. Like her, my eyes shift color, from amber to watery green. Our hair is the same copper.

I press my palm to the cool glass where her hand had been moments before.

Something has awakened in me. Something that was always there, waiting for the right moment. The right reflection.

That night marked a turning point. The mirrors weren’t showing distortions or frightening illusions. They were windows to connections I carry in my blood.

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© Mary Ellen Gambutti 2025-2026