Have you seen the butterfly fairy fluttering around the UUCGV building, conspiring with hummingbirds and bees, musing from blossom to blossom? With a serene smile, she stoops and bends, she kneels amongst the green, a Woman of God kneading the soil, a flower-child caressing the leaves, love flowing from her fingertips, sprouting delight, all around her flourishing colors of the rainbow bright.
If you listen faithfully you can hear, Joanie Mitchell singing – vibrations, joyful, near: “we are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden”. Ann Barrett opened her arms (revealed her wings) and volunteered to tend the UUCGV garden this past year. She also recently volunteered to lead our Green Team, which gets together to tend to the Earth. Ann is grateful to be a part of the UUCGV community. She appreciates the camaraderie, the relationship with like-minded people. She enjoys the intellectual stimulation. She loves the sacred nature that is nurtured here, and the inspiration she receives from the Services. She feels that we fill her need for a spiritual connection, that we are blessed with a magnificent Minister. Many of you don’t know Ann, because she’s just recently become more active in the congregation; however, she’s been fluttering around the Grand Valley UU’s for decades – since 1973. Over that span her participation in the church has waxed and waned like a long, drawn-out cycle of the moon. The more you converse with her the more her carefully cultivated, subtle sense of humor comes out to play. Yet, now is the time to bend the story back a few moons, to her beginning. Ann was born at the Naval Hospital in Chelsea, Massachusetts. Her mother had contracted tuberculosis during World War II, so she had to be quarantined away from Ann. Ann was cared for by a special Navy intern, whom her mother and father said really loved her, and cared for her during the first three months of her life. After that they moved to Glasgow, Kentucky to live with her grandmother. Then she received extra special care from George, the dog. Because of the Navy, her family moved around a lot during her early years. Ann had three sisters and a brother; she was the oldest, and of course THE BOSS. When Ann was 12 years old her family settled in Ventura, California. Her father (who was an engineer) took a job at Point Mugu Naval Base. Although their house was a little rough around the edges (the girls slept upstairs in an unfinished room) their father bought it because it had such beautiful views of the ocean, and it had space for five kids. He was also impressed that it had an intercom system. The entire family was awakened early every morning by a loud recording of reveille. Over the first few years, Ann‘s mother remodeled the house into a wonderland – the upstairs enclave for the girls was perfect. Ann could hear the ocean from her bed at night; it was so comforting. And then the trumpets blaring in the morning! Ann was an extremely shy child, perhaps as a result of moving so often at a young age. One day while playing games at church someone accidentally “stepped on” her face. She saw stars and nearly passed out, but didn’t cry until she went into the bathroom, looked into the mirror and saw that her nose was bent off to the side. She had to wear a pink mask for weeks – so everyone in middle school noticed her for the first time. (Maybe somewhere in her subconscious she realized that if she could handle the attention from this embarrassing situation, and that it wasn’t half bad, she could muster the courage to come out of her shell.) Anyway, when she entered high school, she was bound and determined to try and reach out and be more social. She auditioned to become a pom-pom girl. Being a pom-pom girl and performing in front of crowds boosted her self-confidence. As she settled into her life in Ventura, she became more outgoing. Ann attended the local Ventura Junior-College for two years, with most of her friends. She then spent one miserable semester at Fresno State, until she received a scholarship to the University of California, Santa Barbara, which is 30 miles from Ventura. This was the late 60s, so yes, Ann was a bit of a flower child, grateful for the seasons of love, turning, turning. She ended up with a degree in medieval literature simply because that is the direction that the most interesting classes carried her. Yet, during her spirited college days, Ann also saw a lot of stupid things happening. Violence broke out at some of the antiwar protests. There were riots in the evenings. During one of the riots, Ann witnessed an event which she will never forget. She was walking home from a late class and noticed a big group of people near her apartment. (She lived on Sabado Tarde street, Spanish for Saturday Afternoon.) All of a sudden, a boy threw a Molotov cocktail into the crowd. Someone identified him and the crowd quickly turned into a mob. Practically right at her feet, they had a knife to his throat, ready to kill him. Ann and others who were more sane in the moment started yelling – STOP. Fortunately, at that time there were enough of them horrified by the mindless violence that they were able to prevent the guy from getting killed. Also, around this time some idiot set a bomb in the professor’s lounge and a janitor was killed when he went in to clean. Then a copycat bomber decided to one-up that, and blew the Bank of America building to smithereens. These events brought martial law to town. Eventually, the National Guard came too; but they were mostly young men who just drove around in dump trucks during the day, ogling the girls. After a whirlwind romance, Ann got married after graduating from college in 1970. They moved to Grand Junction in 72, after Mike finished his alternate service for being a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. It wasn’t easy adjusting to the conservative atmosphere of Grand Junction, but she had a small group of close friends, some from the Unitarian Congregation. What Ann liked about Grand Junction was the farming community. She strode into an adventure, venturing to raise awareness, to bring people into alignment with their connection to nature. She got involved trying to bring solar energy to the Valley “but, well, Reagan put a hold on that”. Her son Alex was born in 1975, and she divorced about nine months later. Ann was a single mother for nine years; her mother-in-law was a big help. She married Ed and they were together for 23 years but trying to be in business together drove a wedge between them. They are still friends. He and his wife still come over for dinner occasionally, and they all get along well, as long as they don’t talk about business or food (they are both adamant vegans). When Ann was 50 years old, she started the business of Meadowlark Gardens. It was a lot of hard work. It took up a lot of her time. (Which is why she didn’t attend the UU church during this period of her life.) Running a plant nursery/garden center is like doing farming and retail, which are both very demanding business enterprises in themselves. Yet, she loved every minute of it. She noticed some people would come just to be amongst the plants, like a botanical garden, not planning to buy anything. Yet Ann didn’t mind and actually found fulfillment in this – providing them the space to find peace of mind and experience joy in the garden. This is what she loved about the business, after all, being amongst the plants and spreading the love of all things sprouting green and wonderfully growing. Her way of tending to the Earth. (FYI, the beautiful fountain on our UUCGV patio was donated by Ann.) In 2015, after dating for several years, Ann and Frank agreed to adorn their plot and get married. Ann gained two stepsons, John and Tom. They have lived in their home on Mayfield Drive for three years now. A few years ago, Ann concluded that it was time to close up shop, say goodbye to Meadowlark Gardens, and deploy her green thumbs elsewhere. The economy wasn’t making things easy, and 70 was just around the corner, so she let it go and embraced retirement. She let her eyes wander, searching for spaces in need of pure fertilization, places where she could keep her hands working, spreading the joy of the Garden. Nature, she’s still digging it. She’s found many wonderful places to volunteer. She even hit the sound waves, helping with a radio program on KAFM called “Diggin’ The Garden. The projects most beloved by Ann involve working (playing) with children. She is currently working with a group of friends to get garden clubs started in the schools. They formed a club last year that was a great success. The kids loved it, even showing up early in the morning to weed. This is such wonderful, important, experience for the kids. Ann’s group just met with the local Colorado State University Extension Office to convince them to help spread the garden club program further into the local school system. They are excited about this prospect. People get so much joy from living organisms. You love your dog or your cat, yet you get such a reward from growing plants, whether from the harvest or simply being in the midst of their beauty or their shade. Ann gets so much fulfillment from revealing the secret that should be so obvious, that the garden brings peace of mind. The garden brings a satisfaction with self that cannot be found in technology. So many people are living virtual lives, finding it hard to sleep and becoming depressed. Ann wants to show the children the joy that can be found out-of-doors. Ann wants to awaken a world that has forgotten the wonder of being – of being in relationship with the Garden. Life flows on... in endless song… |
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