First of all I would like to thank kainah and johnnygunn for lending their voices to this Friday night spot. I'm feeling refreshed after the break and ready to entertain you again.
What comes first, the garden or the writer? With me they are intertwined.
Please follow along tonight as I ramble through the gardens in my life.
Come to the Garden
I suppose my first memories of gardening were of digging in the dirt with one of my mother's teaspoons. I was just a small child that really liked the feel of dirt between my fingers. I don't remember much about the gardens in that first house of my childhood and it would be several more years of apartment living before we moved into a house again.
When we did, it had a totally barren landscape that had to be created from scratch. Up until that point my 'yard' had been a weed filled lot behind our apartment building. I saw little in the distinction between weeds and flowers. I picked my share of weed bouquets and blew dandelion fluff with abandon.
It wasn't until that first summer in the new house when that yard was seeded with grass that I learn the difference and lost that childhood innocence of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. You see it became my job to crawl that large expanse with a bucket and a weed fork pulling out the offending species from between the tender blades of newly sprouted grass. I was instructed to be sure to get all of the rootstalk and god forbid if I was caught blowing dandelion fluff about the yard. Day by day the question was asked, "Have you done your weeds yet?" It was my Stations of the Cross for my tenth summer.
By the following summer, the lawn was thick and robust. Bushes and trees planted and beds laid out awaiting planting. My mother indulged in a huge boomerang-shaped rose garden that must have contained fifty different rose bushes. A six-foot stockade fence that was the frame for her work surrounded the whole yard. One side was mostly perennials the other side annuals and a few vegetables and the back of the yard was her prize rose garden.
Mother did the planting and Daddy did the labeling, cultivating and kept the edges of the beds knife-sharp. The health and beauty of their gardens waxed and waned with the lapses into their alcoholic phases for the seven years I lived in that house, but the pristine beauty of the first couple of years was never matched again.
My own early gardening was hit and miss until I gained enough experience to learn my way. As I wrote in Stones I developed a love of rock gardens early on. Each year in our first purchased home I grew a little braver with my planting and growing skills and tried new things. One year I took a huge ball of string and wove a grid all across the back porch for morning glories to grow up and shade that porch from the harsh eastern sun. By mid-summer they were thick and all the way to the top of the porch roof. The flower that faced the inside of the porch stayed open all day and made that area a charming bower.
Vegetables and flowers shared spaces in our postage-stamp sized backyard as every square inch of soil was utilized. I bordered beds with radish and lettuce varieties backed by carrots for leafy drama when the lettuce and radishes were gone. By then the annuals surrounded the tomato plants at the center of each plot.
We had a short three-year stay in our next house that was brand new. We had limited resources, but strong backs. By the time we left that house we had all the hard structural work done, but just a small start on the gardens. The most I remember of that house is fighting the bentonite soil, which is sticky clay that seals over when, wet. By the time we left the few small beds we had were composted to the hilt and doing a fairly decent job of growing flowers and vegetables. But I learned a great deal about the qualities of good soil in the house and how to make it.
The next house we moved into was a wreck inside and out. Once again, we put our backs into gutting and rebuilding and it was a few years until we could really show progress. In the mean time there was a flat roof over the garage that became a whiskey barrel garden. I don't remember all the particulars, but this was when they literally gave whiskey barrels away. We ringed the perimeter and rigged up a hose bib hauled containers of dirt through the house and out the doors of the living room onto the deck to fill up about two-dozen barrels.
The warm gravel-covered roof on the north side of our house proved to be an ideal growing site for vegetables. The barrels were suited for just about everything except corn. It was shaded from the worst of the afternoon sun by a tree to the west. I produced some amazing comestibles on that roof that remained relatively insect-free from being elevated and having no ground to settle into.
The biggest hazard were the awesome hailstorms we were prone to in that part of town from being close to the foothills. One year was very demoralizing with three major pounders exactly four weeks apart. I replanted the garden each time but the last. It was a lame year for flowers and vegetables, but the local nurseries flourished due to gardeners’ optimism that surely that was the last storm of its kind for the season.
The year gardening really grabbed me was the year, 1990, that the Botanic Gardens and the Art Museum had a dual show of the work of Celia Thaxter and Childe Hassam. Celia Thaxter was an interesting person from the 19th century. (See links below for more information on her life and times) In 1988 her book An Island Garden was reprinted from the original version copyrighted in 1894. The beautiful illustrations by the famous artist, Childe Hassam, made for a romantic marriage of garden writing and impressionistic art.
I had already done some wildflower gardens that had garnered attention from the neighborhood along the outside corner of our property. The flowers all came from a package of seed and I really had no idea what the flowers were by name or sight, but the effect was charming. With so many people stopping to ask questions I felt honor-bound to learn something of these old-fashioned flowers that were flourishing in my yard. Off to the bookstore I went and when I asked for a book on wildflowers and old-fashioned gardens, the clerk excitedly handed me a copy of the new book that had just arrived. I could hardly wait to get home and dive between the pages and devour the artwork.
When the next summer arrived and the dual shows were announced I made sure that I would be attending both. The Botanic Gardens had faithfully re-created her garden just as it was laid out in the book right down to surrounding it with a white-picket fence. We strolled the gardens early one evening taking in the sites of all the 'humble' cottage flowers amongst the showier specimens in all the other corners of the professional gardens. The colors, textures and scents entranced my senses.
The next day we made our way to the Art Museum for a look at the full size pieces done by Childe Hassam during his various stays at Appledore Island. As lovely as the pictures in the book were, seeing the real thing took my breath away. The reproductions in the book only captured a small amount of this brilliant man's talent.
One word in her book took hold in my mind and it came from this quote:
"The Norwegians have a pretty and significant word, "Opelske," which they use in speaking of the care of flowers. It means literally "loving up," or cherishing them into health and vigor."
This described my feelings at that point in my life when my children balked at my attentions so I was left to indulge my nurturing tendencies with animals and plants. Besides it was fun to learn so much arcane lore and information.
When we moved to the house we are living in now eleven years ago, I had a blank slate to draw on to build my own gardens and a full sun site that would open up all sorts of new plant possibilities. I was also in a big herb phase at this point too. My Rodale's Illustrated Encyclopedia of Herbs was crammed with index cards of information for easy reference. Also, a wonderful book for water-wise gardening that was frequently consulted written by Lauren Springer, The Undaunted Garden
It was also at this time that I decided to bite the bullet and learn the Latin taxonomy of plants. Much was being made that if you didn't know the exact Latin botanical name of your plants you could not be sure of what you were buying. Fortunately, a goodly number of origination nurseries were including the names along with the common plant name. Poking around in the bookstore, I found a book called: Gardener's Latin by Bill Neal. It is a small, easy to use and easy to understand tome of basic gardening Latin. This lead to more index cards that I turned into a set of personal flash cards. I would stroll the garden testing myself; no doubt in mangled Latin, and gradually I learned just about all the Latin names for my plants, which I have since forgotten!
I have marveled over the years at the explosion of gardening equipment and planting materials. Year by year I watch the catalogs grow thicker with every gizmo and device dreamed of for gardeners of all levels and abilities. A couple of my favorite nurseries gave up valuable plant space to showcase all the new bells and whistles of the home gardening world. I have traded some of my older hand tools for more ergonomic models to please my arthritic hands. Kneepads became a necessity and I love my little belt-on holster for my small collection of pruners and scissors. One of my most-used implements is an ordinary kitchen knife. Nothing fancy, just a blade about 6 inches long, but it comes in very handy for all sorts of gardening maneuvers. I drag along an inexpensive plastic bucket when I dead-head, so my needs for the majority of my garden work are simple.
I finally reached an age where time was taking a toll on my body and after a bad summer and an operation to remove my gall bladder coupled with drought conditions and watering restrictions, I realized that it might be time to scale back my garden. As you read in Stones, it was a blessing to do so filled with interesting new challenges.
I once saw a show about aging and adapting your interests. The son narrated the story. It started with home movies of when he was younger grooming the wild wooded acreage around their home into a park-like area. It was a backbreaking endeavor with a lovely pay-off. Later as the man got older his circumference shrunk to large and varied gardens all around the house, then to smaller plots and finally when he was quite elderly and in a wheelchair, his son had built some window boxes for him to still enjoy his love of gardening on a scale that he could handle. The images in that story have stuck in my head all these years for I understand that someday I will probably be on that level. If I am, I hope someone will hand me a teaspoon and let me play in the dirt.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For more information:
Wiki: Celia Thaxter
Annotated timeline of her life.
Map of the Isle of Shoals chain and Appledore.
Online Facsimilie copy of 'An Island Garden' By Celia Thaxter 1894 Illustrated by Childe Hassam
Wiki: Childe Hassam
Large scale picture of Celia in her Island Garden
Poppies, Isle of Shoals
Link to Art book: 'Childe Hassam: An Island Garden Revisited' By David Park Curry
A must-have for fans of his artwork.
In case you missed it, possum has a diary up DOWN HOME: Family Doctoring