The gift is what the season has cultivated within us: a little more patience. A little more trust. An eye better able to notice small things, like the moment a seed pod opens, the gold of late light on dried stems, the continuing work of roots long after blossoms have faded. That what we cannot see persists.

The season teaches us this, year after year, if we are patient enough to listen.

To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven…Ecclesiastes 3:1–8

Turn, Turn, Turn… - Pete Seeger

The Deeper Harvest
They moved through the gardens as stewards, not masters. Hands that knew how to hold without grasping. Fingers felt what was ready to give and what still needed time on the branch. This is the gift gardens offer those who move slowly enough: bounty, and belonging to a living cycle, that our care, and every small attention we pay, to the dawn hour, to the waiting, to the bundling and the keeping is healing.

Perhaps we gather; not merely the fruits but an understanding of reciprocity. The plant offers; we receive with care. We preserve; we tend. We do not empty the storehouses.

We partner with what grows. The deeper harvest is not what we take from the garden.

Book One Silverton Estate Duology

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© 2026 Mary Ellen Gambutti All Rights Reserved

Hello, I’m glad you’re here. My interest in Irish and Celtic mythology, folk and fae lore deepened as I researched Through the Yew Hedge. First, it was W.B. Yeats, and I devoured his collection of fairy and folk tales. Enraptured by his poem, The Stolen Child, I pulled epigraphs. On to the Irish foundational myth cycle and the Tuatha de Dannen swept me away. Most recently, I found a Welsh scholar online, Dr. Gwilym Morus-Baird, and his CelticSource classes. I love the music of the language and deep poetic resonance, the praise and transformation poetry of Taliesin, the renowned Welsh Bard. Dr. Morus-Baird’s, Taliesin Origin, and the Welsh folk and fairy stories of the The Mabinogion Lady Charlotte Guest's translation (1812-1895)

I’m not an expert herbalist, but my history in horticulture draws me to botanical lore and imagery.

Note: I do caution readers to seek expert advice in administering or ingesting herbs.

The Story at Hand: This story may resonate with those with severed lineage and heritage, whether by adoption or other displacement, a well-known Welsh folktale of herbal healing.

The Latin for healing, Sanatio, fits the overall theme of The Garden & the Gate: Protection, Recovery, Restoration, and Preservation; both novellas’ shapes and the adoptee’s experience: Sanatio, healing and restoration.

The Lady of Llyn y Fan Fach
Lady of the Lake / The Myddfai Physicians passage from Through The Iron Gate, scene with Helen and Stella.

When the hawthorn was in blossom, and the garden was slipping out of winter, Helen and I were sitting in the Rosemere on a February evening. The Franklin stove, ticking with heat, drew the damp from the plaster walls, while we sipped tea on the worn, cobalt blue velvet sofa. Helen found herself remembering the Folklore of the Estate: the story she had recited at twilight in the Medieval Garden on Midsummer, on what felt like eons ago. She shook her head, recalling the Pierce lecture and what it did to open her eyes to the complex, even nefarious version of “The Three Who Remained.”

But she relaxed into the moment with the fond memory of her fireside stories with me in the living room of the Tudor Manor. “I recall another legend, about the Myddfai tradition. I showed you the copy of the 1861 translation that Elizabeth kept in the Hidden Library, The Physicians of Myddfai, translated from the Red Book of Hergest.” Helen scattered wisdom like seeds, trusting some would take root. “Do you remember? It’s the fourteenth-century Welsh manuscript, bound in red, of poetry, prose, history, and the medical practices of Rhiwallon and his sons, the Physicians of Myddfai; their ancient herbal remedies and healing arts.”

Helen recited by heart, her cadence expressive, as with each storytelling.

“In the shadow of the Black Mountains of Wales lies a lake called Llyn y Fan Fach, where mist clings to dark waters and the boundary between worlds grows thin.

“Here, in the time of the old kings, lived a farmer’s son who tended his cattle on the mountain slopes. One Bealtaine morning, as he watched his herd drink from the lake’s edge, the waters began to shimmer with an inner light. From their depths rose a woman of such beauty that she seemed woven from moonlight and morning mist. Her hair fell like silver water, and in her hands she carried herbs that glowed with their own luminescence.”

Helen told of the farmer’s son offering the lady rough barley bread and his hand in marriage. The Lady refused both the hard bread and his proposal. The next day, he offered unbaked dough, which she refused. On the third day, he brought his mother’s perfectly baked bread, and the Lady accepted both his gift and his proposal of marriage.

“‘I will live with you in the world above,’ said the Lady of the Lake, ‘and I will teach you secrets known only to my people. But know this: if you strike me three times without cause, I must return to my realm, and all I have given I will take back.’

“She bore him three sons, and to them she taught the healing arts of her people; which plants held fever-breaking powers, how to read the language written in leaf and root, and the proper times for gathering when the moon blessed their potency. She showed them gardens that existed in both worlds, plots where fairy flowers grew alongside earthly herbs.

‘Each plant holds a key,’ the fae mother told her sons as they walked among the healing beds. ‘But the key unlocks different doors depending on the need of the one who seeks healing. A wise physician reads not just the herb, but the person who requires it. Read the patient, not the symptom.’”

I had seen the words in Elizabeth’s cipher. I had read them in Ann Fairchild’s Blue Book, translated into kitchen remedies for the sight.

Helen continued: “The legend says he struck her, and although the nature of the blow, whether accidental or an innocent tap, is not known, upon the third blow, she returned to the lake. She brought her fairy cattle dowry with her and disappeared. Nonetheless, her healing wisdom remained.

Her three sons were the first Physicians of Myddfai, and their fame spread through Wales and beyond. Kings summoned them to court. Their descendants tended the sick with healing arts learned from their fairy mother. They created gardens that bridged two worlds. Five hundred remedies are recorded by monks at the monastery of Strata Florida, preserved through centuries of use, and translated in the nineteenth century.

Elizabeth Silverton brought the Welsh physicians’ tradition with her to this country with her plan to design the Monastery Garden, adhering to their principles. The concentric circles and the quadrants. The placement of healing herbs by sympathy rather than taxonomy. The reflecting pools, positioned where the boundary between seeing and being seen grows thin.

The Red Book’s ancient remedies and Elizabeth’s Victorian cipher both encode the knowledge that healing requires reading the whole person, and that the green world offers a wider view of medicine.”

She paused. The stove had settled to embers.

“Yet, Elizabeth still participated in a system of selective healing. That tended some and abandoned others. That read the patient, as the Lady taught, but only when the patient arrived with certain resources. The Lady of the Lake gave her knowledge freely. To her sons. To their descendants. To anyone who sought healing. She placed no conditions on who could receive it. Whereas, the Physicians treated anyone who came to them. The tradition was open. Elizabeth built the garden according to the Myddfai principles, then let the fae decide who could partake of the healing. The knowledge was used, and it was rationed.”

The fire had gone to ash. The cedar scent pressed in through the old walls. The physicians of the lake kept no single book, but many leaves written in differing hands. They held that plants remember the waters from which they rise. Therefore, the distiller must use water drawn near the place of growth, lest the spirit of the herb wander. Fire, vessel, water, and plant must stand in the right relation. When these four are joined with patience, the plant yields not only medicine, but memory.

Attributed to the Physicians of Myddfai

Thanks for being here. Until next time.

© 2026 Mary Ellen Gambutti All Rights Reserved

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Sarah’s Journal, August 1st
In the Medieval Monastery Garden, the herbs have passed June’s tender awakening and the urgent fullness of midsummer. By now, I’ve moved through culinary beds with intention, pinched the parsley weekly from spring through early summer (the flat-leaf and the curled), harvested cilantro leaves before the plant bolts, tipped dill fronds while they were tender. Chives are continuous. Sorrel in the shaded corner, and the soft new growth of mint clipped before it hardened into midsummer’s fibrous stalks. Now the work transforms.

The airy, parasol blooms of dill, fennel, cilantro, and parsley signal the time to snip, dry, and preserve, and were this a culinary garden, I would. But in these curated herb beds, I let the stems of umbelliferous plants stand. The platform-like flower heads attract beneficial insects such as ladybugs, lacewings, hoverflies, parasitic wasps, and tiny native bees that suppress plant pests. Larvae of the swallowtail butterfly climb the parsley stalks. It’s a small act of triage, a choice that divides the garden’s purpose. Some umbels I harvest for their seed, coriander, dill, and caraway for the kitchen and next year’s sowing. I leave others for the pollinators who arrive like benediction.

This is Lughnasadh, the Celtic tradition of the first harvest. At this moment, the plants are shifting toward their deeper purpose. Feverfew opens its tiny daisy flowers. Mugwort stands tall, moving toward seed. Purple thyme and sage parade for bees. These are the plants Elizabeth marked for drying, distillation, and further purpose. Welsh physicians called betony the master herb, suitable for nearly every ailment of the nerves and the head. Eternal and practical, plantain, from which every wound remedy begins.

Every handful of herbs cut for drying, every basket of berries marks the passing of another season. The wealth of harvest and impermanence walk together, reminding us that nothing disappears, but transforms. The garden now stands between fullness and farewell. It is neither the exuberance of June nor the quiet sleep of winter.

It is a threshold, where we may linger.

Beyond the Medieval quadrant, in the meadow, drifts of purple New England asters. Elderberries are purpling, ripening in a few weeks; they’ll be heavy enough to harvest. Margaret and Charles will cook them down for syrups, jam, and cordial. Elizabeth once concentrated them further.

We notice the subtle turnings as the garden offers back what we have entrusted to it. The harvest is both to gather and to let go. Blossoms become fruit. Flowers become seed. Fallen leaves become rich soil and next year’s growth. No endings in the garden; only changes.

Thank you for reading!

© 2026 Mary Ellen Gambutti All Rights Reserved

Welcome!
The Garden and The Gate explores the Elizabeth Silverton’s New England Estate: the landscape, histories, and living architecture that shape both novellas:
Through the Yew Hedge and Through the Iron Gate.

As a former garden designer, I’ve always believed landscapes carry memory. Here, I’ll share the botanical knowledge, mythological threads, and horticultural foundations woven through these books. Some posts will focus on specific plants or garden spaces. Others will approach the threshold between history and myth. We adopted or otherwise displaced people understand how institutions shape (and often seal) the stories we rightfully inherit. I hope such passages will resonate.

Although both books can stand alone, Book One provides rich backdrop of the Silverton world and its characters to enhance your experience of Book Two.

I invite you to Rosemere …

Through the Iron Gate: The Rosemere Records

PROLOGUE
This is the Iron Gate I have known since infancy, since Sarah Caldwell carried me through it, and over the Red Arch bridge to campus to show off her adopted baby.

I remember Grandma Helen’s warm hand as I toddled through the Gate onto the Cedar Lane sidewalk. Charles Hawthorn has always tied the unruly rose onto this brick pier.

Over twenty years ago, on an icy morning, Sarah was here to tour the Medieval Garden with James when the latch stuck. As she shouldered into the iron scrollwork, the rose bloomed black on thorny, bare canes.
The plaque on the iron gate read: Please Close Tightly

Today, under this dark autumn sky, long canes oscillate against moving storm clouds. Persistent black rose hips cling. Lifting the latch, I lean into the ancient iron of the place of crossing. The languid complaint of the hinges reminds me that, for those who pass through with patience, the garden passes through them. Ellen’s memory carries me.

Rosmarinus officinalis. Boundary marker, threshold plant. “Plant at entry points where protection is required, but passage must remain possible. The scent steadies tremors in those who cross.”

Excerpt from CHAPTER 1
The Blue Book

I turned fifteen that September, nearly a year since Ellen left me for the second time. Late Autumn light slanted into the Keeper’s Cottage front windows, gilding the weathered oak dining table. Charles unfolded one extra leaf and added three chairs to the Hawthorns’ usual three. I helped Margaret open and smooth her antique linen tablecloth, and lay her best stoneware and stainless steel ware while she lit candles in pewter holders. Fragrant beeswax flames danced over the rustic centerpiece of fall’s final flowers in the blue glass jars Margaret cherished.

I had stopped by the Guest Cottage on the way to my birthday gathering. The morning glory vine cascaded over the porch rails, its blue flowers defying the late September chill. The black rose stem we had found on Ellen’s pillow, a token of her passing the previous Samhain, now held dark hips on long, vigorous canes. Charles had rooted the stem in a pot by the door of my mother’s temporary dwelling. He had brushed frost from that single, surviving bloom. After one season, the black rose now trailed across the railing. James hadn’t yet moved into the Guest Cottage and would be home in the Keeper’s Cottage after his day in the Archives.

Sarah and Helen met me at the Keeper’s Cottage, my second home. Mom was carrying the spice layer cake Helen baked in the Manor’s trusty AGA oven. Margaret was ready with fifteen candles, and she sifted powdered sugar over the top of the fragrant, dark cake.

Ellen’s absence filled the room. At my fourteenth birthday party at the Hawthorn’s home, she had placed a gift on the sideboard and said, “Birthdays matter in our family.” Our family. The words filled my heart. They meant more now, weighed down by the loss of the Fairchilds I knew only from Ellen’s heritage stories.

Cedra had been less visible since the Third Council last Winter Solstice. Estate magic seemed to have waned with as her presence decreased. When I asked after Selwyn and Eleris, Cedra waved away my inquiry: Other duties, other realms. She was either unconcerned or masking trouble. I might catch a glimpse of my Dryad Mentor wearing overalls in the Apothecary Garden, or in the Greenhouse, dressed the Abbess in her brown robe and hood to propagated herbs and roses.

In Elizabeth Silverton’s brick-walled rose garden, Cedra protected her hands and arms with long gloves against the thorny hybrids. She sedately pruned and clipped; wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat to shield her face and silver braids. In her long, blue chambray dress covered by a canvas work apron, she bore a strong resemblance to the Foundress in the old photograph Helen had found in the Archives. then rested on the rustic cedar bench before retreating into the cedar groves.

End of Excerpt, thanks for reading. Until next time!

Through the Yew Hedge

Through the Iron Gate

The Silverton Estate Duology

©2026 Mary Ellen Gambutti All Rights Reserved

Welcome, Readers ~
Here you are, in The Garden and the Gate, the essay series in which we explore the botanical history, traditions, adoption themes, Estate lore, and a glimpse of the Celtic traditions that have found their way into the stories, and selected excerpts from Book Two.

Please wander back to Behind the Hedge for excerpts from Book One, the characters, craft, and more.

A Bit About Book Two

The Garden remembers. The quadrants’ herb rows are well-groomed, but Elizabeth’s private cottage, Rosemere, sealed after her death, has been left to the rough New England winters. The front garden, presses wildly against the locked, century-old shutters. Charles and Cedra have dutifully continued to prune the rare roses in the walled cottage garden, all except the black roses, rampant on the copper downspouts. They seem to linger as if waiting for Elizabeth to return.

When the Silverton Foundation divests two residential cottages on the Estate grounds, Rosemere and the Guest Cottage, Sarah and Helen Caldwell buy Rosemere. Inside, the sallow autumn evening light does not overturn Book One. It deepens it into the darker territory of institutional secrecy.

The Iron Gate has always been there, at the edge of what the Estate shows willingly and what it keeps to itself. In Book Two it is an entrance to a history that was never meant to surface. The records are real. The questions remain: Who was assisted, who was not, and why?
The Rosemere Records were designed to both conceal and reveal.

Much more ahead. See you around the Estate.
Mel and Islay

©Mary Ellen Gambutti 2026. All Rights Reserved.

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. Stella’s voice 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 inherited 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.

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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

Thank you!

© Mary Ellen Gambutti All Rights Reserved

Elizabeth’s Design

Elizabeth Silverton, a British Victorian scholar, medievalist, and botanist, acquired acreage adjacent to the New England university she and her brother founded. Her vision was to preserve the land as a botanical refuge, providing a restful and restorative environment to her community. She would continue to study and practice the ancient Celtic healing traditions. An imposing, three-tiered iron fountain with a reflection pool commanded the central axis. In each of four raised beds, she planted apothecary herbs in disciplined rows, old as medieval times. An imported obelisk and a finely wrought arbor and bench marked solstice lines, astronomical alignments echoing ancient healers’ scripts.

Brick and stone walls bordered three sides of the enclosed garden, supporting espaliered fruit trees and vines. A feathery yew hedge, tall and of the deepest green, edged the fourth side, with a heavy cedar board gate fitted within the hedge. The gate was a less formidable version of a medieval British gate, though its leather strap hinges and iron bolts gave it that appearance. It swung outward; its threshold allowing safe egress from the inner sanctuary to the wide lawn. Past enchanted perennial borders, toward the Cedar Grove portal, and to the path into the forest dwelling of the three fae — the beings who had guided Elizabeth’s hand in the garden’s design, as, perhaps, they had for the Welsh Physicians of Myddfai, thirteenth-century gardeners and healers. All thin spaces.

Indeed, the three healers had inspired Elizabeth’s healing practice and her design of the Silverton Estate Garden in New England. The Physicians of Myddfai classified plants by their physical and emotional effects, in harmony with nature and humanity. In the Physicians’ quadrant garden design, calming herbs grew separately from herbs grown to strengthen the heart, and from herbs for mental clarity. The arrangement was intrinsic to the healing experience, in a place where different ways of knowing, empirical and intuitive, both documented and lived, were brought into dialogue.

An Adoptee’s Perspective

Stella’s mirror-sight, her ability to perceive ripples and presences in water and glass that no one else could see, was the story’s magical expression of heightened sensitivity. Real-world adoptees often report hypervigilance and attunement to what is unspoken, possible survival adaptations from newborn-maternal severance and displacement.

When Sarah encountered Stella frozen before the hallway mirror at age eight, the pediatrician called it a disorder to be managed medically. But Margaret Hawthorn, the Estate Keeper, Charles’s wife, brewed tea from the garden’s innermost circle to calm the adopted child. In time, those closest to Stella learned to accept her perceptual differences as part of who she was. Her fae mentor, Cedra, taught her to steady herself in mirrors, dewdrops, and cedar-ice reflections. Stella thrived within the garden’s honesty, in the spaces that protected her through seasons and life stages. Sarah curated and nurtured, and Stella grew in the botanical sanctuary that was Elizabeth’s legacy.

Author’s Note: Though long retired from horticulture, my work in small gardens and on large estates, I relate to the garden as a sanctuary. I learned over many years that landscapes hold deep time and memory, when planting perennials by stone walls built by hands generations earlier, and fashioning new walls from the same local fieldstone. When wondering whether a decades-old tree was born by seed dispersal, planted by a settler, or nurtured with knife and deft hand in a graft. Beyond human design, gardens are life itself: cycles of growth, dormancy, and renewal, beauty and decay found side by side.
— Mary Ellen

The Garden and the Gate is an essay series that explores botanical traditions and lore, Celtic myth, and themes of adoption. Mary Ellen writes memoir and personal essays as herself, and lyrical fiction as Islay Corwin, author of the Silverton Estate duology.

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Thank you for reading and for your support.
The Duology is widely available in e-book:

Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic
Through the Iron Gate: The Rosemere Records
Amazon

©Mary Ellen Gambutti. All Rights Reserved.

Friends,

When I found my biological family, I realized that things had happened to me before I had words or memories for them. Intrinsic moments were unrecorded or forgotten.

Did those things even happen? How real or meaningful were those occurrences to me? What is the truth of one’s origin when there is no original story to tell?

Many people are troubled by these questions. Adoptees live with them in a particular way, because of how our origins are recorded, sealed, and rewritten by law. Because the story of where we came from was taken from us before we were old enough to ask for it.

The Record

I never questioned the circumstances or location of my birth. What I knew of my origins came from my adoptive parents, the Catholic agency, and the state of South Carolina. Everything else was thin. A thinness that speaks volumes in myth, mystery, and magic.

My baptismal certificate had served as valid identification until I attempted to obtain a new passport at age forty. I was astonished to learn that South Carolina law denied me access to my original birth certificate; the document I needed, as a married adult, to prove who I was. Until then, I had accepted the legal suppositions handed to me: the vocabulary of a church document that doubled as a state record, and the myths it carried.

The amended birth certificate displayed the names of the parents who raised me. Not my origins. My adoptive mother mailed me the adoption papers when I asked for them. “I don’t know why you would want these,” she wrote. I did not know, then, how to explain to her why I wanted them. I didn’t have the language, even at age forty, to affirm my ownership. Because the record of my own beginning belonged to me, regardless of who the law said could hold it.

What I did want to know was: Would she be alive? Two years of calls and letters before my first mother and I reunited.

At the age of seventy, I finally held an uncertified copy of my original birth certificate. South Carolina still has restrictions.

The Doubleness

Many adoptees’ lives are shaped by a strange duality: belonging and not belonging; being someone’s daughter while also outside the familial circle. A kind of illegitimacy.

One mother is lost. Another offers the silver platter of adoption, with its uneasy privileges and obligations.

Adoptee’s Riddle of Belonging

A formula of lies obliterated my origins
and gave me a chance for a better life.
What life might I have had?
Removed from the powerless,
given to those who had
what I needed to live,
but who weren’t mine.
Where were mine, the lost ones?
All are left behind in a riddle of unbelonging.
— Mary Ellen Gambutti

This sense of duality is not a disorder. It is not ingratitude. It is the accurate perception of a reality that most adoption language doesn’t name directly: that you can be genuinely loved and genuinely severed at the same time. That belonging and loss are not opposites. That the record of your origin can be rewritten by law without the origin itself being changed.

Before Words

Life writing honors what can be documented. Yet beneath the evidence lies an earlier layer of experience that precedes the record.

When an infant is separated from her mother in the first hours of life, the event does not live in time but in the newborn’s nervous system’s wordless archive. The body remembers the displacement. The dissociation. The earliest impressions are formed in the womb, and in the first moments after birth. Before language. Not in memory. And they may last a lifetime, as trauma clinicians have long observed.

Many adoptees recognize a heightened sensitivity: a quick response to emotional undercurrents, an ability to read the room, a hypervigilance that began before they had words for what they were watching for. Survival adaptations? Primal wounding, intuition, extra-sensory awareness. A kind of deja vu, perhaps? The separated, abandoned newborn waits and watches, adjusting to loss before she understands it.

Recovery becomes complicated if you cannot remember what happened. You cannot document what precedes the record. You cannot grieve, in the ordinary sense, a loss that occurred before you knew. But this is the grief of the disenfranchised. There is no reason to grieve, or to be ungrateful, you are told. Preservation becomes all the more urgent.

If the record was sealed, and the body’s knowledge precedes language, what can be recovered? What must be preserved if not in document, nor in testimony? What can hold what the archive cannot?

The story can change.

The Language

I did not set out to write magical realism, though I was intrigued by the form. I would be approaching fiction for the first time, which was daunting given the relative ease I had cultivated in writing personal narrative. The process of memoir, the stir of memory and emotion, the discipline of evidence, had brought me closer to understanding my own truth than I had expected.

Memoir allows the evidence to stand: the military family transfers, the bases and separations, the impermanence, the tensions and transitions, the discipline. The baptismal certificate. The amended birth certificate. The adoption papers in their envelope from the Rock Hill law firm.

But something essential lay beyond literal description.

I needed a language strong enough to hold the contradictions of adoption. A language in which both love and harm are real simultaneously. A language that doesn’t resolve the tension between severance and belonging but instead allows both to exist, intact and true, without requiring a verdict.

Magical realism gave me the language. It offered an escape from the difficulty of adoption’s realities. But it works because it widens the frame. It allows truths to exist that resist the narrow limits of literal description. Because it can hold what the nervous system holds; the pre-verbal, the pre-memory, the knowledge that preceded language, and render it visible while honoring its validity.

In my fiction, written under the pen name Islay Corwin, the central character carries mirror-sight: the ability to see through reflections and across thresholds. The inherited trait opens a conversation about adoptee heritage and reflects the effects of newborn separation. The child senses the world, perceives ruptured identity, and without choice, moves between worlds.

The adoptee at the center of the story carries three names. One was taken from her. One was given to her. One she ultimately claims for herself. Adoptees require little explanation of this. Severance disrupts the self. Only patching the wound of loss, the meeting between Stella and her first mother is tender, yet awkward. After all, they have become strangers. Their bond was broken by the first mother, whose circumstances shaped an impossible decision.

Recovery and Preservation

There are no simple answers, although adoption discourse often presses for them.

Was it a rescue, or was it a rupture?
Are you grateful? Angry?
Do you belong to this family, or to another?

Of course, the answer is yes.

The work of recovery, if possible, is not to choose between these truths. It is learning to hold them simultaneously: grateful and grieving, belonging and having been severed, to love the family that raised you and to mourn the family you lost. This is to be Ruth Ann and Stella and Questa all at once, without resolving the contradiction, but instead finding integration in acceptance, without transforming the dilemma into something tidy.

Preservation insists that the full record exists, not just the amended birth certificate, not just the baptismal card with its official vocabulary, but the body’s knowledge, the pre-verbal experience. Insisting that these things happened. That they mattered. That their absence from the adoption records does not erase those early experiences.

In the end, the language that came closest was the one that allowed for finding magic in the mundane. Some truths are too large for the literal.

This essay grew from an earlier piece published in Roots & Branches. It has been substantially expanded to include the Recovery and Preservation framework that organizes
The Garden and the Gate.
Thank you for reading. I appreciate comments and re-stacks in support of my work.

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Mary Ellen Gambutti writes memoir and personal essays as herself, and lyrical fiction as Islay Corwin, author of the Silverton Estate duology. Protection, Recovery, Restoration, and Preservation is the organizing principle of The Garden and the Gate.

The Duology is widely available in e-book:

Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic
Through the Iron Gate: The Rosemere Records
Amazon

A note to readers: The Garden and the Gate is now open. Several essays, including this one, are free to all subscribers. In Behind the Hedge, you’ll find a number of excerpts from Book One of the Duology. Future essays in this section, exploring the botanical traditions, Celtic mythology, Welsh healing practices, and adoption themes that ground the Silverton Estate duology, will be available to paid subscribers.

If you’d like to support this work and access all features of Roots & Branches, including the full Recovery and Preservation essay series, you can upgrade your subscription here:

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Thank you for being here!

© Mary Ellen Gambutti All Rights Reserved

I’m glad you’re here. I write personal essays from an adopted person’s perspective, touching on identity, heritage, memory, and belonging.

Roots & Branches is home to those essays.

This newsletter has grown into something larger than I first imagined. In 2025, I stepped into fiction for the first time, adopting the pen name Islay Corwin. The result is the Silverton Estate duology, two published novellas rooted in adoption, botanical knowledge, and Celtic tradition.

I invite you to explore:

Behind the Hedge
Craft essays on the making of the duology. The adoption themes, the botanical gothic world, and the thinking behind the fiction.

The Garden and the Gate
Essays on botanical traditions, Welsh healing practices, Celtic mythology, and adoption themes that ground the Silverton Estate duology. The Recovery and Preservation essay series lives here. Some essays are available to paid subscribers.

Seasons
Image poetry inspired by Japanese haiga, haiku, haibun prose poems, and vignettes of gardens, nature, nostalgia, and impermanence.

Join me on this journey between myth and memory.

Islay Corwin is the pen name of Mary Ellen Gambutti, writing 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. Her debut novella, Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic, draws from her experience as an adoptee, weaving botanical knowledge with fae mythology to explore the search for wholeness. Through the Iron Gate: The Rosemere Records deepens the world of Silverton Estate in a gentle, gothic academia tone.

The Duology is widely available in e-book:

Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic
Through the Iron Gate: The Rosemere Records
Amazon

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I’m also the author of Permanent Home: A Memory Collection, Stroke Story, Fortitude’s Footing, Neither Here Nor There: A Memoir in Essays, and I Must Have Wandered: An Adopted Air Force Daughter Recalls. All available widely in e-book format.

Fom PART TWO

In which Sarah, Helen and James confer in the Archives, and
together, read Elizabeth’s bequest.

The Archives

While Sarah waited over the long winter, she immersed herself in research and writing. The giant oil-burning furnace that lived near the cellar door where coal deliveries were once made could keep the workroom at a tolerable temperature if she wore a sweater, except on the coldest days.

From the manor’s upper floor bedrooms and her office, Sarah had easy access to The Estate’s labyrinthian Archives, two flights down the back staircase in the basement of the Tudor Manor.

From mid-morning until noon, Sarah worked by natural light at the massive oak table, its surface worn smooth by the elbows of academics in woolen blazers. She might be found reading in the afternoon or evening in the overstuffed Victorian armchair under one of several wall sconces that Charles had converted from gas to electric fixtures in the fifties.

As might be expected of an antique home, it lacked sufficient insulation and weather stripping, although the University had made attempts to control temperature and humidity in The Archives to preserve its treasures. Newer windows in the conference room, though not state-of-the-art, were a step up from former drafty casements.

A complex fragrance of aged paper, leather bindings, cedar wood cabinetry, and dried botanical specimens was present in the network of storage halls, lab, reading, and conference rooms, like a perfume of preserved knowledge.

A tall oak, glass-fronted cabinet displayed a curious collection of Elizabeth’s found objects, natural artifacts, and archaic finds unearthed during excavation, showing that The Estate was not the original habitat.

A stack of flat drawers held part of an extensive collection of pressed botanicals, the Herbarium. Sarah photographed the specimens, while James assisted by adjusting the lighting and holding the acid-free supports to protect the fragile archaic pages.

“The Latin is standard taxonomy for the period,” Sarah said, “but these marginal notations are in another...”

Helen, working on the far end of the table, raised her head and asked, “May I see?”

She put aside cataloguing folklore texts to stand next to her daughter, and Sarah accommodated Helen by adjusting the lighting. Helen eyed the notation for a moment, then turned to a set of shelves opposite the table, and took down a slender bound volume, opening it on the table to a medieval manuscript facsimile.

“I thought so!” Helen said, returning her reading glasses to her forehead. Sarah and James joined her, and she said, “These aren’t botanical classifications. They’re references to the Physicians of Myddfai.”

“Who?” James asked.

“They were Welsh herbal healers from the 13th century, James. Their manuscripts contained one of the earliest systems of plant medicine in Britain, combining empirical observation with folk practices that recognized plant properties.”

Sarah leaned closer to compare the notations. “You’re right. Elizabeth wasn’t only using plant taxonomy to identify these plants, she was cross-referencing their traditional medicinal applications.”

“Not just medicinal,” Helen said, as she motioned to James to bring the volume over to the herbarium pages. “The Physicians of Myddfai classified plants according to their relationships to states of being: physical health, emotional conditions, spiritual transitions, and human relationships.”

Sarah’s skepticism surfaced. “That seems rather esoteric for someone creating a historically accurate monastery garden.”

“Not if you consider the whole purpose of monastery gardens,” Helen said. “Medieval monks grew herbs to treat physical ailments, yes. And they believed in the interconnection of body, mind, and soul.”

“Yes, that’s right, Mom.” Sarah referred to another open volume beside her on the table, a folio of monastery garden layouts. “See how herbs were grouped in physic gardens? Plants were by their therapeutic purposes. Those treating melancholy would be placed where they received morning light. Those for fever reduction would be near water features.”

James seemed intensely interested, and the three fell into their collegial rhythm: Sarah identified herbarium specimens, pointing to their on-site locations, which James then documented. Helen translated marginal notations that she said revealed Elizabeth’s interpretations of plant properties.

Elizabeth’s formal Bequest stipulated the care and preservation of The Garden as a botanical contemplative space, a refuge for world-weary academics. As Sarah and Helen cataloged herbarium specimens, they came across a note tucked among pressed samples:

To Future Guardians of the Garden
Spring Equinox, 1892

The whole of my garden serves purposes beyond what is stated in the official Bequest document. While presenting my work publicly as an historical recreation of a contemplative garden, here, I’d like to disclose the deeper intentions behind my design.

The concentric herb beds follow principles found in manuscripts from the Physicians of Myddfai and other medieval healing traditions. I have arranged the plants not merely by botanical family, but according to their documented therapeutic properties for those seeking peace, clarity, and restoration of spirit.

The innermost circle contains herbs traditionally used for calming anxiety and promoting restful sleep: chamomile, lavender, and lemon balm. The middle ring holds herbs that medieval monks used to sharpen mental clarity during contemplation: rosemary, sage, and mint. The outer ring provides herbs known to strengthen the constitution and support general wellness: echinacea, calendula, and thyme.

I have yet to mention my intentional placement of the Medieval Garden between the Cedar Forest and lesser cultivated, wilder grounds; the meadow and pond, for the optimal benefits of wildflowers and the Cedars’ aroma.

I humbly trust that your enlightened care will preserve this contemplative and therapeutic purpose for scholars and visitors to benefit this place as a sanctuary for the mind to rest, the spirit to heal, and for the body, as for those who tend it, a vital medicine, that it may continue to offer solace and restoration.

With Devotion to the Arts and to Science
Elizabeth Silverton

No specific conditions were mentioned, but the harvest times, preparation methods, and observed effects showed a systematic approach to something beyond mere historical recreation. “She developed an alternative healing system,” said Helen.

Sarah was intrigued despite her skepticism, but was content for the moment with her own speculation.

The Structure
This discovery led Sarah to look deeper. Before long, her neat annotations marked plant species and growth patterns on a transfer copy of the detailed architectural drawing. This was a bird’s-eye view of the medieval monastery garden that showed the formal quadrant structure with the central fountain, arbor, terrace, aviary, and obelisk.

The next time they were together, Sarah traced the quadrant structure and said, “The layout incorporates elements of traditional monastery gardens. What do the positions of the obelisk, fountain, and arbor tell us?”

James nodded, his expression thoughtful as he examined the plans. “The proportions must be intentional.”

“May I?” Asked Helen, her eyes widening. “These aren’t just aesthetic choices,” she said. “They’re astronomical alignments. See how the path from the fountain to the obelisk aligns with the winter solstice sunrise when viewed from the terrace arbor?” Could it be that the positions of these Garden features ensure visitors derive the Apothecary’s benefits at optimal times? For example, morning light warms herbs, bringing clarity so the mind is fresh for study. Perhaps, the moist evening shadows release calming scents when rest is needed.”

James leaned closer. “And this line from the arbor to the aviary...”

“Summer solstice sunset!” Helen was enthusiastic. “Elizabeth embedded calendrical markers into The Garden’s structure! Her precise astronomical alignments suggest she tested specific variables. She wasn’t just following precedent.”

Sarah looked intrigued, but said, “That seems... speculative.”

Helen smiled, recognizing her daughter’s skepticism. “Give me a moment.” She recalled a reference book and returned with her well-worn volume. “This is a study of sacred geometry across Britain. The geometric relationships between standing stones at places like Callanish and Avebury follow similar patterns to Elizabeth’s, except they used megaliths, and she uses garden features.”

Sarah was adapting to her mother’s unconventional perspective: “So, are you suggesting that Elizabeth was not only recreating a medieval aesthetic, but that she also aimed to synthesize multiple traditions?”

“Yes, precisely. The terrace arbor provides the viewing point for these alignments. The quadrant beds correspond to the four elements in alchemical tradition.”

And so, the conversation around the colleagues’ research and discovery would continue for months and years.

End of excerpt. Thank you for reading. Until Next Time!

The Silverton Estate Duology is now widely available in E-book format.

Through The Yew Hedge

Through The Iron Gate

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©Mary Ellen Gambutti, All Rights Reserved.

My personal essays and this novella series are influenced by adoption, and my belief that all the occurrences around my adoption profoundly affected my physical and emotional make-up. I’m not a therapist or an expert. Except for my work in Allied Health and Horticulture, I am largely self-educated. Since a brain hemorrhage at age fifty-eight, I have focused on reading and writing. My speech and cognition was impaired, and I was determined to return to language skills.

At seventy-four, I’ve grown content with my progress in that regard. And there’s the continual displacement of self. The damaging guilt which is the legacy of my natural mother. So, ethics comes up, as does severance, secrecy, silence.
And words.

Hiraeth
This beautiful word, borrowed from across an ocean counts toward recovery. A Welsh word with no precise English equivalent; not quite homesickness, not quite longing, and not quite grief. And it is all of these at once, and something more.

It is the sense of a home you cannot return to: a home that lives in a dim memory of what once belonged to you, or was part of your very being. That is it, I think, it is the feeling of what is in your essence. Except, there is no “there.” And where I belonged, I cannot say.

Homesickness implies a home you know and have left. Longing is too gentle. It suggests something sweet at its center, a wish that could be satisfied if the wished-for thing arrived. But hiraeth offers only non-fulfillment.

For the adopted, the displaced, this home is a place in the heart that existed before the rupture, or because of it. It is not the “no place like home” feeling. Not a fond memory. An adoptee separated at birth was removed, or abandoned, before a home, and after the comfort of the womb. That loss precedes memory, precedes language; it lives in the nervous system. It is atmospheric. Present but unsourced. Real but unlocatable.

English is a language of precision and accumulation. It borrows freely, builds compounds, invents technical terms. But for certain interior experiences, the ones that live beneath articulation, in the body’s oldest knowing it reaches its limits. Hiraeth holds all of this without resolving it. It recedes when we reach toward it, the way we humans, insatiable as we are, recede from ourselves.

The feeling is not tranquility or serenity. It’s anxious. Uncertain.

Home That Preceded Memory

I didn’t know my origin story until I was in mid-life. What I grew up with was not a memory of loss but something more like its shadow: a persistent sense of incompleteness, of being apart from others, of standing in a room where most of the furniture was present but something essential was missing. No one would or could tell me more than what I had now was my adoptive parents’ protection, with all its forms, conditions, and restrictions. The one who left me behind would stay nameless, formless, a non-entity. Any others who might have been were gone with the furniture.

This is what hiraeth names for me and for the adoptees I’ve spoken with. Not grief for a specific person or place we remember, but disenfranchised grief . Grief for the mother’s body, her scent, the voice I heard from her womb. It’s not all in my imagination. It’s in my body. Researchers of early attachment have slowly caught up to what adoptees know in the body: separation in infancy leaves traces. The infant does not remember, but the infant has imprinted. Hiraeth names that foundation. That inheritance.

Why a Welsh Word Works

I write fiction rooted in the Welsh healing tradition, and the mythology of the Physicians of Myddfai, in the landscape of the borderlands where Welsh and Irish currents have mingled for fifteen hundred years. This is not accidental.

The Welsh tradition understands something about what endures. About what the land remembers when the records are lost. About what the body carries when the documents are sealed. About the relationship between healing and knowing, between recovery and what cannot be recovered.

The water remembers what you give it to carry.

This line appears in my second novella, attributed to the Physicians of Myddfai. It is my attempt to say, in fictional form, what hiraeth says in a single word: that what is lost does not disappear. It is held in the land, the water, and in the body. In the nervous system’s wordless archive. In the ache that is without source, but ancient and real.

Hiraeth. Maybe you know the feeling.

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Mary Ellen Gambutti writes memoir and personal essays as herself, and lyrical fiction as Islay Corwin, author of the Silverton Estate duology You can purchase in e-book format here.
Thank you!

https://books2read.com/ThroughtheYewHedge
https://books2read.com/IronGate

Dear Readers,

Happenstance explores themes of chance and circumstance, delving into how unanticipated events shape lives and identities. In my memoir, a similar poem, Out of the Blue, alludes to my adoptive father’s Air Force career. And in Through the Yew Hedge: A Tale of Identity Magic, (Islay Corwin), the transcendent prophecy speaks:
“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…”

Later, before the First Council; the gleeful fae recite:

“Happenstance: The Fae’s Prophecy, Revisited

Virgo, your stars predicted sweaters and storms,
uncertainty and dread,
an accident of place and time…”

Happenstance

Virgo, your stars predicted there’d be sweaters,
storms, uncertainty, and
dread of this
accident of place
and time.

Her designated arrival on the twenty-first,
the cusp of Libra,
first of fall,
Mother’s un-joyful occurrence.
Happenstance.

She was alone, unloved, abandoned
with no potential
but for me.
First, she, then me.
Once before, and twice, then three.

Had she, on rising from her birth ward bed
considered, beyond surrender, a plan, instead?
That those papers would not hold true,
the facts of our fated circumstances?
Happenstance.

That they’d be muddled, muddied by illegitimacy?
Fabricated, flimsy, flat-out false, filed
within a mystery hour,
no tiny footprints rendered —
a false identity.

Her baby girl was set aside, left with guesses—Only,
it happened — my birth happened.
This is my story: A mother, another somewhere,
and I, the mystery of a difference,
the unintended me.

Out of the blue, blue like a sapphire,
September sky, blue like my birthstone, fall’s blue asters.
Virgo’s cloud-screened stars
glimmer faintly
on my origins.

This poem has been previously published in both prose and verse.

https://online.flippingbook.com/view/149890563/


© Mary Ellen Gambutti


About the Author
Mary Ellen Gambutti, writing under the pen name Islay Corwin, is known for essays that weave botanical traditions with themes of identity, memory, and belonging. Drawing on her own experience as an adoptee, her work explores the quiet mystery of happenstance, where coincidence becomes recognition. Bridging personal essays and memoir with the Silverton Estate novellas, she writes in the liminal, where the ordinary reveals itself as something larger—without explanation or solution.

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Adoptees may yearn for the memory of what was lost. The safety before the severing. The traditions, the heritage, siblings, or what we cannot return to unless we have the key.

Long after I searched for and found my natural mother at age forty, I heard the phrase, the fog of adoption. Our reunion brought us new roles, but not clarity. I saw no regret in her eyes. Why should I have expected it? Simply, she was thrilled that I looked for her. Did you hold me? I wanted to know. When I asked, I saw her effort to remember our intimacy. What she had lost forty years earlier. The hospital, yes. The circumstances of her arrival and departure, yes. My father, no. The fog, the veil, between full understanding and uncertainty served as permanent protection; even after confirmation of life and validation of our relationship, doubt remains.

Her absence had been thorough, irreparable. There would be no chance to see her child when she signed the paper, they told her. Final severance unraveled natal trust, covered the mirror, erased the memory, crushed and eradicated the tendencies and traits that tell us who we are. The effacement leaves us scarcely seen and barely heard.

© Mary Ellen Gambutti

I write memoir and personal essays as myself, and lyrical fiction as Islay Corwin. Here are our universal book links.

Mary Ellen Gambutti

Islay Corwin

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This prose poem was first published in HumanKind Literary Journal. Years later, Stella’s voice 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.

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© Mary Ellen Gambutti, All Rights Reserved

The Wound

She heard the music from inside the womb: her mother’s gospel songs, the radio’s twang, the jukebox blare, the honky-tonk guitar. The shouts. Clank of bottles, and sugar taste of beer. She crept under her heart where she felt her mother’s rocking laughter, or a surge of her fear. The grip of her dread. The clutches of her sobs.

A System

The State had a system for poor mothers, mothers who worked in textile mills, like Conestee and Poe, Pendleton and Monaghan — carders and bobbin-winders — women who lived in villages along rail-tracks near mill-dams, waterfalls, in the rented shabby saltbox shanties of millworker daddies and mammas, who worked for meager pay. The State had a system for unwed mothers. Social workers urged, suggested, persuaded mothers to give up their babies. “The agency will find her a good home,” they said. “A married couple will want your baby, and give her a better life,” said the system, the agency, the church, and her parents. “Leave her here. Leave the paperwork to the lawyers. Only sign — here”.

A Child of Choice

February 27, 1952

In the upstairs nursery, the baby girl lies awake in her crib. Maybe her brown eyes follow swaying bare oak branches across the winter windowpane. As she finds her soothing left thumb, she whimpers in empathy to another infant’s cries. She hears the voice of the one who brings her comfort; who changes her diaper, lifts her, and holds her on her soft, white lap. Ruth Ann, she calls her, and the infant opens her mouth like a hungry sparrow for the cereal spoon. The kind woman holds her against her bosom, and chubby fingers reach to the white veil. Sister returns the baby to the crib, props a glass nursing bottle of warm formula against a rolled receiving blanket, and turning, she moves to attend to another waiting infant. Ruth’s brown eyes scan the nursery.

Because they could, South Carolina kept her waiting for her birth records until the age of seventy, and she still has no legal right to her Original Birth Certificate, only the uncertified copy. Perhaps she is one of the lucky ones; the complete process took only thirteen months…

What is now known of Ruth Ann’s timeline from birth:

Two months in emergency custody in the Greenville hospital until Catholic Charities located her mother, persuading her to sign the release.

November to February in the Rock Hill infant home, as a good prospect for adoption.
Eight months probationary care with the Air Force couple in their Sumter apartment.

Adoption is Certified in Rock Hill, October 1952.

Adoption Decree
The party of the first part hereby gives and grants the party of the second part the complete custody, management, care, and control during its minority, together with the complete right and power as one in loco parentis to provide for and consummate the adoption of the said child by such person or persons as in the sole discretion of the party of the second part it may deem proper for the best interests and welfare of the said child ...

Do-Overs

The child’s rights are subsumed and sworn over. Under official State seal, Ruth Ann’s name is replaced. As a legal entity, she is effaced. Vital Statistics locks away the original birth certificate.
What does Ruth Ann lose besides her name? Her mother, her family, her heritage, her medical history, her true place of birth, her origins—her identity. Let’s say she was born in Rock Hill, certified by the Church, while the State holds the true data, the real names. Rebirthed, re-branded like a commodity in a court, her name is exchanged for the name of the chosen child. It would have mattered. Names matter. Double names are popular in the 1950s: Mary Lou, Mary Beth, Mary-Jo, Sue Beth, Sue Ellen. Ellen Mary—the dead mother of the adoptive father—her new name is an upside-down do-over. A mirrored inversion of someone she’ll never know. The infant breathed, bloomed, grew, and was called Ruth Ann for her first five months, and emerged like a butterfly from a do-over cocoon, newly certified in one fell swoop.

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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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