The Autumn Star

Autumn is a season of riches.

We celebrate the harvest, reap the bounty of our spring and summer toil, return to school to bathe in knowledge, witness metamorphic coloration, welcome that "temperate sharpness" as Keats described the air to a friend (perhaps in preparation for his ode, "To Autumn"), and festoon our bodies with layers and swaths of cloth (a luxurious panoply of wools and cottons and silks painted in seasonal hues, tempered by checkered patterns).

Gone are the pastels that speak a language that ushers in life and prefigures a youthful idealism. Here are the dramatic hues, at once vibrant and intense, melancholic and ruminative, that balance the warm intensity of summer with the cool purity of winter.

Those colors: nature's apology or compensation for waning daylight.

We almost hear the voice that nature speaks: "I diminish celestial light, but in its place I offer a fulgent landscape."

Our evening galactic friends have, too, reversed roles. Nocturnal beacons become diurnal candelabra.

Tricyrtis x Sinonome Toad Lily, of the two varietals I have, is by far the chief Autumn Star, the shamash in the menorah. Five arching branches, each roughly 3 feet in length, offer masses of spectacular spotted flowers (and buds) awash in regal purple.

Autumn has arrived.

And Tricyrtis x Sinonome Toad Lily, bathed in the color of royalty, seems well positioned to usher in this most magical of seasons.

 

Chaos Theory

Several days ago--or was it weeks?--I attended a garden lecture by W. Gary Smith, a BLUE HEN! (For all of you non-UD, "Dela-where?" folks, that means he is a graduate from the grand University of Delaware where I teach.)

Smith is a wildly successful artist and landscape architect. His vita reads like a veritable list of garden porn: the Santa Fe Botanical Gardens; the Children’s Garden at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas; the Discovery Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in New York; the Therapeutic Garden at
the Birmingham Botanical Gardens in Alabama; the John C. Wister Rhododendron Garden at Tyler Arboretum in Media, Pennsylvania; Winterthur; the Tropical Mosaic Garden at the Naples (Florida) Botanical Garden); and Longwood Gardens.

Of course his awards list is long.


And his talent is unquestionable.

And his creativity boundless.

And his charm--a natural, almost boyish, completely un-self-conscious charm--really endearing. 

Are you jealous yet?

I am.

Well: nah, nah, nah.

He did not did not work on my garden!  Shazam!

So we can't add my FIRST PLACE winning garden to his list. Um-hmm. Snap.

I digress.


His talk focused on unleashing creativity in the garden--and I think he took a most unexpected approach. He bound creativity within parameters set by nature: replicating its patterns, shapes, and forms.

He discussed eight basic patterns found in nature, which he more thoroughly covers, among other things, in his new book (yes, he writes beautifully too), From Art to Landscape: Unleashing Creativity in Garden Design.

The eight include scattered, serpentine, fractured, naturalistic drift, radial, spiral, dendritic, and mosaic. His book adds a ninth: the circle.

But poor Gary, accomplished as he is. Why poor? Well, now, I actually have something to teach him. Yes, me. Teach. Gary. Oscar-equivalent winning star that he is. Me.  Teach. Him.

Ahem.

Yes.

There is another pattern he forgot:  THE MESS.

That is correct. Mess, as in my garden. Mess, as in "not naturalistic drift."

Mess, as in "not scattered."

Mess as in "what the ... ?!"

Mess as in "that explains why there's no color in your garden."  (There is; that person just happened to come "between seasons.")

Mess as in the awards announcer saying, after she read a blurb about my garden, "those were his words, not mine!"  Laughter.

Mess, as in "uh, what did you say your design was based on?"

Yes.

My garden. The first place winning mess. (Thank you, Delaware Horticultural Society, for being blessed with southern gentility and having the grace not to mention the obvious.)

But Gary, as much as I'd love to talk to you, have you for dinner (gasp..am I blushing as I write this?!), introduce you to my garden, well, I love my mess. You can't touch it. But....

But perhaps it could be representative of something--oh, that's right, a mess--in your next book? A sort of guide on "what-not-to-do?!"

I can see it already: my little idea propels him to create a wildly successful HGTV program to embarrass all those folks like me who think they garden, but actually all they do is play in the dirt and create messes of all sorts.

If that happens, just promise you'll remember little old me, okay Gary?!

"The Sky is Falling!" And other Space Debris in the Garden

Henny Penny has wailed once again, and once again we ignored her. Poor Henny Penny, for this time she actually got it right!

Well, sort of. The sky was not falling, though things were certainly falling from the sky--and I don't mean the drenching rains we've been having in Delaware for what seem to be an eternity.

No.  I mean something else.

Today was momentous: a dead NASA satellite hurtled towards Earth and broke apart in the atmosphere. Major pieces were expected to survive its re-entry, and the guessing game began on whose heads those pieces would potentially fall.

We all waited with baited breath, including this elephantine spider (about twice the size of a dollar coin), which wove a massive web that measures approximately 4 feet in diameter, from the deck railing to a chair, all in hopes, I surmise, of catching a piece of space debris and then selling in on Ebay so it could retire to Florida and never face the threat of cold-induced death again.

Yes, folks: pieces of space debris reigned down upon us. Well, "us" in a generic, inclusive sense. That "we are the world" kind of meaning.

Which we know in the end means, practically, nothing.

This event, though, is now a non-event. The drama is over. The satellite on its final orbit passed over Eastern Africa and then across the Indian Ocean. It changed trajectory over the south of Australia and turned northwards over the Pacific, with North America (and our friendly neighbors to the north, in Canada) in the line of potential crash.

Yet no one in North America saw anything. Nada. Zip.

All of the pieces and parts of the satellite are now most likely resting on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, though no one knows exactly where.

Still, I ventured outside to look for pieces of space debris in my garden.

And lo and behold I found some! 

Yes, folks: space debris in my garden at 410!  Imagine!

 And here it is: a STAR!  Yes, a star. Tricyrtis x Sinonome: Toad Lily. She's large for a Toad Lily, perched atop a pendulous stem of roughly 3 feet, appearing ever the beacon in these dark days of grey-black clouds, shortening days, and much rain.

All the World's a Stage...

Shakespeare’s famously articulated metaphor obtains a new twist in Wade Graham’s American Eden: From Monticello to CentralPark to Our Backyards: What Our Gardens Tell Us About Who We Are.

Since we ask “our gardens to speak for us, often assigning them certain lines in the play that we write about ourselves,” the garden inhabits the role once occupied by the Greek chorus. It communicates the background of the stories that become our individual lives, and reveals to others our hidden emotional baggage.

And that, my friends, is far from outlandish.

It is a heavy thought.

And a scary one.

Imagine: all our dirty laundry airing between wisteria and forsythia, our closeted skeletons hanging from our Crabapples and Smoke Bushes, our Freudian desires situated between our Pelargoniums and Penstemons!  

But calm down.

 

Garden viewing is an interpretive affair, so your nosy neighbor who “sees” depression in your prized collection of Weeping Cherry Trees might actually be witnessing your celebration of sublime beauty.

I won’t pretend to know what our gardens communicate to the world about ourselves—I leave that to the professional garden writers—but I will offer two thoughts.

First, it’s all speculation. Interpretation. One might see the impeccably neat and orderly garden and intuit its creator as uptight, anal-retentive, and potentially in need of “loosening up” more often, when in fact the gardener’s desk might be cluttered, and the gardener a disheveled mess of a soul. But here, Graham is right: we assign the garden certain lines in the play that is our life. He doesn’t say the role is one we actually live or depict or inhabit in our everyday existence.

Second, on a more personal level, I offer a self-interpretation. My first place win in the “New Garden” category means I cannot enter that category next year. (Besides, my garden is 3 years old, which was the maximum age for the new garden category.) So I must look to the “landscape garden” category: but all of the winners this year, though we all have “city” properties, garden on much, much larger tracts compared to my inner-city plot.  I just cannot compete with spaces adorned with multiple beds experimenting with various color combinations, or arbors, or pergolas, or multiple rooms (water gardens, patios, private spaces): in other words, drama and suspense and surprise.

And this has instigated two thoughts: (a) buy another house with more land [slightly irrational, I know] or (b) take my garden to the next level by creating more drama [more than slightly irrational, I know].

 Let’s not even consider the first.

The second has unleashed an inner demon: the competitive demon. Or diva. I’m not sure which.

But I hit a wall—thankfully a proverbial one—and realized what I have done. I have pulled a Callas on mygarden’s Norma. (G-d love Maria Callas!)

Two of my de-stress, pleasurable activities—going to the gym and gardening—suddenly became sources of stress.

With regard to the gym, I told M, my friend-cum-my unpaid-de facto-personal-trainer, that I wanted to ratchet up my gym activities and “develop a body.” Gain definition. Never a sculpted body as his (I lack the discipline and the desire) but physical development that reveals my investment. But I have since realized that I now loathe going to the gym—it has become a chore, a source of stress (why aren’t my muscles getting bigger? Why is my waist still X inches? Why do I still feel fat?)—and my waist now protests.

With regard to my garden—well, I lament my behavior and my thoughts. Why?

Well, some, of course, garden to “collect” specimens. Others garden to impress neighbors. Some garden to reflect outwardly their inner beauty. Others garden to fill time. Some garden to expend energy.

I garden because it is about the only thing I can do without assistance of a book. I am an academic. Ergo, I possess no usable skills.

I garden also to stop the incessant chatter in my head. Gardening inhibits a particular incisive, debilitating self-criticism that usually rears its ugly little head no matter what I do. Up to a week or two ago, I had not yet subjected my gardening to grueling criticism. I was able to dig, remove, annihilate, amend, replace, create, stylize, imagine, envision, plan, and scout out new finds—all without fear of self-retribution.

But now? Every decision, every thought, every motivation is met with inner scorn. Gardening could only be worth it if I collect another first prize in the landscape category.

Divas be damned! Demons back to hell!

Here, Graham may be wrong. I have never been “competitive” except in minor ways. I have never been “careerist,” except in minor ways. But “winning” can almost imperceptibly lapse into a competitive game of accumulation if we are not careful. There is nothing inherently wrong with that. But if we lose sight of why we actually began to engage in our pleasurable activities, and if we permit pleasure to morph into pain, well, then, we have moved into the abyss.

In that sense, Graham is right: but in a much deeper sense. Instead of the garden parroting who we are or might be, instead of reflecting like the Greek chorus our hidden emotions, gardens instruct us on how to Be. We just need to be open to how they speak.

The Twins

This morning's New York Times coverage of the 10th anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks opens with numbers:

3,653 days have passed since 8:46 a.m., the day 11 September as we now know it "began" not in the technical sense but emotionally, psychologically, culturally, and politically.

87,672 hours have passed,

which translate into 5,260,320 minutes, or

315,619,200 seconds.

2,749 people died at the World Trade Center site, and another 224 in Washington and in a Pennsylvania field. 343 firefighters died in the line of service.

But one number was not mentioned: 2.

The twins.

I understand why: 6 buildings actually collapsed at the New York City site (WTC 1, 2, 3, and 7; St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church; and half of the Bankers Trust building). The North Bridge over West Street that linked the Tower complex to the World Financial Center was also destroyed as the Twin Towers fell in upon themselves. WTC 4, 5, and 6 partially collapsed. Many more buildings suffered major damage. A section of the Pentagon was also destroyed.

And four planes virtually vanished, relinquishing only a few identifiable tires or seat belts or other small objects from their fiery ends.

So to single out 2 buildings approaches blasphemy.

But the Twin Towers--and the now iconic photographs documenting their final minutes--remain emblazoned in our collective and individual memories. They occupy significant space: but now that is an incorporeal, unfathomable space that mimics the seemingly limitless extension of those towers deep into the sky.

Today, we think of those Twins. Not one of us can escape even a moment of time in which our minds flash back to that day, or conjures images of the sleek steel lines of the buildings' exteriors--parallel vertical runways leading us to a world beyond.

And today I think of other twins--the twin Pieris japonica shrubs in the Buddha Bed that died while I was away this summer. Yesterday, I inadvertently discovered that which I was looking for but did not know it. The Buddha Bed, like the World Trade Center site in New York City, faces redesign. I will not, however, preserve the footprints of my lost twins, for in the gardening world sentimentality must occupy a backseat to the demands of real estate and the dictates of natural processes.

Fortunately with respect to the Ground Zero redesign, sentimentality rightly won and a memorial (belated in my view owing to the abhorrent, unbecoming squabbles that characterized the early reconstruction and redesign process) now finally appears.

The footprints are preserved.

Reflecting pools look downward--and deeply inward--at the improbable abyss that has become our memories of that devastating day.

And the Winner Is....

...the gardens at 410!!

I was very fortunate and am very thankful to have won FIRST PLACE in the New Garden Category, which the Delaware Center for Horticulture defines as "any type of garden started within the last three years" that has not been previously judged.

Ancestral callings, as I have previously mused...


Of course I called my Aunt Annie (New York master gardener, cultivator of exquisite gardens) to tell her that I now have proof that I inherited her gardening genes, though she was quick to remind me that those were actually my grandparents' (they created extensive gardens and were known for their mass collection of irises). And she regaled me with that story of a six year old me, begging to help her garden, learning how to dig and plant so many years ago.

We talked gardening for a while--listing all those plants that have bloomed early, communicating plans to redesign this or that bed--and then shifted topics to more mundane matters: catching up after several weeks away. She had knee replacement surgery before I left for Paris in July, and there are complications. "Good thing I'm not on the garden tour," she declared.

I know it must pain her not to be able to go out and garden--though she's a tenacious gal and won't let a little thing like immobility slow her down. She always finds a way.

Then, to reassure me, she reported that her gardens are full of color, despite the more than copious amounts of rain that have fallen of late. I'm sure they are. And I'm sure they look spectacular.

Now that my gardening experience has crested with a FIRST PLACE award (surely this must give me bragging rights, no?!), I turn my sights to other matters:

with what do I fill the empty spaces in the Buddha bed to replace the fallen Pieris shrubs;

how best do I repel those nasty leaf eating bugs while I am away next year (if I go away)--bugs that have clearly taken a toll on the Obsidian Heuchera and Orange Marmalade Hosta, though I think they still look smart against a backdrop of Sawtooth Japanese Aucuba and paired with Toad Lily;

what news plants to import into the garden to replace some of the more common specimens;

should I buy a new house with more land to garden;

and on, and on...

Isn't that the joy of gardening?!  It never ends.

Adult Pleasures XIII: The Excitement of Getting Excited

Men of a certain age (sans pharmaceutical assistance) must know exactly to what the title refers.

Yes: the jocularity of self-expression!  The exuberance of that raw, naked sense of being at one with you and yours! The playfulness that comes without restraint!

Ah, yes: the jauntiness of looking down and realizing that, yes, indeed, one is excited at the splendor before you! The excitement of getting excited!

And excited I am: for tonight is the awards ceremony for the Delaware Center for Horticulture's (Wilmington) City Garden Contest!!!!

I've been so busy today that I did not think of it. But suddenly, upon finishing two time sensitive projects, my subconscious brought to the fore the Awards Ceremony.

I looked down at the splendor before me--oh my goodness, you naughty reader, not THAT!  My Garden, silly (my study is on the second floor so I can easily look down upon the shade garden...you know...all those "aerial shots" you've seen over the last year and a half?!).

Well, and now I am giddy with excitement!

I know, I know: I may not win. I may not even get an "admirable mention." (But I would lie if I did not admit I would like to win or at least be mentioned, admirably.)

But that really isn't what it's about. Seriously.

While thinking about my excitement, I've come to realize why adults like their "toys" (ahem...naughty reader), whether they come in the form of video games or cars or electronics or gardens or dolls or whatever else one can imagine. These toys are not simply objects of escape. They are simultaneously producers and symbols of pleasure.

Our toys permit us a joviality, a vivacity, a playfulness that we often have to mask in our professional, adult lives. Our varied toys permit us necessary release.

In a few hours I shall find myself in a room with others who like to play in their gardens and dig in the dirt and transplant and design and collect.  

And that is something to get excited about!