Scott Libby is a flower unforgotten.

Construction fencing was recently removed from Portland’s Back Cove Trail as a five-year long, $59 million construction/renovation project ends. While the needed sewer transformation created an improved public park, one important loss in the modernization was a garden planted on the Back Cove trail in 2008 by Raymond-born landscaper Scott Libby.

Libby was killed with a cast iron frying pan and left to die on the railroad tracks in Bethel in 2009. Despite a preponderance of evidence against the accused killer, the charges did not stick.

Today at sunrise, I ran the Back Cove Trail past where Scott’s garden once proudly bloomed. I could not shake the feeling that he was there, at the edge of the new sod, planting more flowers between the weeping pines.

Gary Wagner
Portland