This summer I decided to do something extravagant for my garden. I recruited a photographer (my brother) to take pictures of everything as it bloomed – from the dark chocolate lilies, the tomatoes and morning glories, to the shy, new grapes, peeking out from beneath their shady, green leaves like toddlers at their mother’s legs. In my mind this is a revival of an old practice. All gardeners know that the best bulbs come from Holland. In the 1700’s – long before the camera – wealthy Dutch families would hire painters to commemorate the especially handsome blooms in their garden. The camera just puts this old fashioned idea within the reach of the rest of us.
I look forward to leafing through my garden pictures this winter. Minnesota cold can leach from the soul any hope for spring. There are some who would argue that this is the natural balance of things. That all things in life must pass – even spring’s flowers. There are a number of artists in this world who specialize in art that pleases briefly, then decomposes and surrenders to the earth. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is forever. That is so not me.
I feel a need to commemorate my garden this year. Perhaps because it has never reached so high, offered so much shady green or bloomed in such profusion before. It is a newer garden – something I started only five years ago when I first moved to this house with my soon-to-be husband. The pictures represent to me a way of commemorating our life together and our anniversary coming in a few short months.
When I moved in with my husband, he was already a confirmed bachelor in his forties. He had lived in the house with his brother and a succession of male roommates. The place needed a female touch. And a deep cleaning involving a boat load of bleach to sterilize everything. There were cat issues. Never let us speak of the cat issues. The yard where my garden is now, had a chain link fence, an empty flowerbed against the west wall, and nothing more. It was a deeply depressing square of plainness for a life together that was supposed to be fresh and new.
Like most couples starting out, we didn’t have much money. Friends and co-workers offered me bulbs they thinned from their gardens. One co-worker even had a sister who was a professor of botany – she brought me crates of extras from her garden in Wisconsin. From my grandmother’s garden, I transplanted some of the pale pink peonies she had cultivated since before my birth. From my mother’s acreage, I found wild daisies and the abandoned dwarf irises my Great Aunt Helen had grown in her garden.
The only thing I really purchased was woodchips and the Minnesota winter hardy grapevines. I planted these along the chain link fence – a monstrosity that kept in the dog, but limited my picket fence dreams like prison barbed wire. I soon learned, however, that having plants does not a garden make. The peonies were particularly stubborn. They resented being disturbed. It took them three years to offer only one half-hearted flower.
This year, however, I had a profusion of peonies. The grapevines cover almost entirely the hated chain link fence, creating a wall of green. Before the yard made me tense, now I can sit and relax in my lawn chair and watch my kids play. My eye trips soothingly from one patch of green to the next. I feel cooler in the hot Minnesota summer. It took five years to reach this point, something that seems hard to comprehend in this fast paced world. But gardening is different from ordering fast food. It takes time and I feel nurtured by it.
So the pictures of my flowers serve more than my desire to preserve what is by its nature ephemeral. Meant to last a season and nothing more. The photos also serve as a reminder to me of the need to be patient. I wish somehow, when I was newly married, someone could have shown me a picture of my future garden and said – “relax” or “calm down, you’ll get there.” The same could be said for my marriage, which - along with the garden - is hitting the five year mark.
Our marriage also took work. Here too there were chain link fences and stubborn, transplanted roots that took time to adjust. But we too are blooming now. It took time and work. I learned more patience. We learned to calm down. Gardening and marriage have taught me that nothing worthwhile in this life seems to take less than five years.
I look forward to leafing through my garden pictures this winter. Minnesota cold can leach from the soul any hope for spring. There are some who would argue that this is the natural balance of things. That all things in life must pass – even spring’s flowers. There are a number of artists in this world who specialize in art that pleases briefly, then decomposes and surrenders to the earth. Nothing is fixed. Nothing is forever. That is so not me.
I feel a need to commemorate my garden this year. Perhaps because it has never reached so high, offered so much shady green or bloomed in such profusion before. It is a newer garden – something I started only five years ago when I first moved to this house with my soon-to-be husband. The pictures represent to me a way of commemorating our life together and our anniversary coming in a few short months.
When I moved in with my husband, he was already a confirmed bachelor in his forties. He had lived in the house with his brother and a succession of male roommates. The place needed a female touch. And a deep cleaning involving a boat load of bleach to sterilize everything. There were cat issues. Never let us speak of the cat issues. The yard where my garden is now, had a chain link fence, an empty flowerbed against the west wall, and nothing more. It was a deeply depressing square of plainness for a life together that was supposed to be fresh and new.
Like most couples starting out, we didn’t have much money. Friends and co-workers offered me bulbs they thinned from their gardens. One co-worker even had a sister who was a professor of botany – she brought me crates of extras from her garden in Wisconsin. From my grandmother’s garden, I transplanted some of the pale pink peonies she had cultivated since before my birth. From my mother’s acreage, I found wild daisies and the abandoned dwarf irises my Great Aunt Helen had grown in her garden.
The only thing I really purchased was woodchips and the Minnesota winter hardy grapevines. I planted these along the chain link fence – a monstrosity that kept in the dog, but limited my picket fence dreams like prison barbed wire. I soon learned, however, that having plants does not a garden make. The peonies were particularly stubborn. They resented being disturbed. It took them three years to offer only one half-hearted flower.
This year, however, I had a profusion of peonies. The grapevines cover almost entirely the hated chain link fence, creating a wall of green. Before the yard made me tense, now I can sit and relax in my lawn chair and watch my kids play. My eye trips soothingly from one patch of green to the next. I feel cooler in the hot Minnesota summer. It took five years to reach this point, something that seems hard to comprehend in this fast paced world. But gardening is different from ordering fast food. It takes time and I feel nurtured by it.
So the pictures of my flowers serve more than my desire to preserve what is by its nature ephemeral. Meant to last a season and nothing more. The photos also serve as a reminder to me of the need to be patient. I wish somehow, when I was newly married, someone could have shown me a picture of my future garden and said – “relax” or “calm down, you’ll get there.” The same could be said for my marriage, which - along with the garden - is hitting the five year mark.
Our marriage also took work. Here too there were chain link fences and stubborn, transplanted roots that took time to adjust. But we too are blooming now. It took time and work. I learned more patience. We learned to calm down. Gardening and marriage have taught me that nothing worthwhile in this life seems to take less than five years.
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