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| Pastoral beauty, ancestral home. |
My garden is living memory: perennial, tangible, potent. From the outside it might look like a jumble, but almost everything that grows here is attached to a memory. If you walk through my garden, you may not feel them, but they are there for me-- invisible strands of memory, people I have loved, places I have been, all connected to my heart as I walk through, a marionette belonging to a life on earth.
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| Making memories of her own, maybe. |
Akebia, alstroemeria, daphne, lilacs, casablanca lilies, dahlias, tree peony and blue himalayan poppies, all for my brother, and the house he used to have on Charlestown St, and the things he used to grow there. Pansy for my grandma and her humble goodness, surrounded by songbirds. Gladiolas and sweetpeas for my mother, begonias for my mother's mother. Night blooming jasmine in homage to the winter I spent in the Bay Area when I was a freshman in college, walking down a sidewalk near College Avenue, stopping dead in amazement at a jasmine vine pouring over a fence, realizing that somewhere in the world it is Spring in February, and understanding in that moment how big the world is.
Roses and Petunias for my dad. Trillium, forget-me-nots and fragrant violets for the woods I used to know intimately as a child. Black-eyed susans and daisies for the fields. Phlox and rhubarb like those that have grown in front of my parents house all my life. Bearded iris like the ones out past the garage, siberian iris like the ones at the end of the long driveway where I spent hundreds of hours waiting for the schoolbus. Peonies for the bush that grew under the old bird feeder, next to the well. Geraniums for my mother-in-law, zinnias for her father, whom I never met, but love anyway, because he loved flowers too. Mock orange for an afternoon on the UMass Amherst campus, where my heart broke open with the scent of that plant. Hollyhocks for my teacher, a poet who loved his Vermont garden. A fig tree for an evening and good conversation in a hot tub on Vashon Island many years ago. Wallflower and crocosmia in memoriam for my old garden, and the house I lived in when I became a mother. A cherry tree for my daughter, a plum tree for my son. Spicy red snapdragons and red raspberries for my sweetheart. Peas for my sister, with whom I once lay in the sun in the everlasting afternoon, on the hood of an old black car, splitting them open one by one. And for me... I love them all, but in my own secret garden, the tulips are just for me. The thick-stemmed, huge, sultry red ones, the aching pale pink ones, the angelic white ones, the dark and secretive black ones, the fancy Rembrandt parrot ones, the simple cheery yellows, the difficult pointy-petaled ones, the gypsy polka peony-petaled ones...all for me. The Lily of the Valley I dug up in New York, from the earth of 3 generations of my family, carried 3000 miles in my suitcase, transplanted in Washington... for me. The pale Canterbury Bells, which almost ring, for me. The clerodendron tree, with its wonder upon botanical wonder, discovered in Seattle one sunny singing afternoon with a beloved friend... only for me.
My garden is made of love and memory, and it is one of the best things in my life.
Roses and Petunias for my dad. Trillium, forget-me-nots and fragrant violets for the woods I used to know intimately as a child. Black-eyed susans and daisies for the fields. Phlox and rhubarb like those that have grown in front of my parents house all my life. Bearded iris like the ones out past the garage, siberian iris like the ones at the end of the long driveway where I spent hundreds of hours waiting for the schoolbus. Peonies for the bush that grew under the old bird feeder, next to the well. Geraniums for my mother-in-law, zinnias for her father, whom I never met, but love anyway, because he loved flowers too. Mock orange for an afternoon on the UMass Amherst campus, where my heart broke open with the scent of that plant. Hollyhocks for my teacher, a poet who loved his Vermont garden. A fig tree for an evening and good conversation in a hot tub on Vashon Island many years ago. Wallflower and crocosmia in memoriam for my old garden, and the house I lived in when I became a mother. A cherry tree for my daughter, a plum tree for my son. Spicy red snapdragons and red raspberries for my sweetheart. Peas for my sister, with whom I once lay in the sun in the everlasting afternoon, on the hood of an old black car, splitting them open one by one. And for me... I love them all, but in my own secret garden, the tulips are just for me. The thick-stemmed, huge, sultry red ones, the aching pale pink ones, the angelic white ones, the dark and secretive black ones, the fancy Rembrandt parrot ones, the simple cheery yellows, the difficult pointy-petaled ones, the gypsy polka peony-petaled ones...all for me. The Lily of the Valley I dug up in New York, from the earth of 3 generations of my family, carried 3000 miles in my suitcase, transplanted in Washington... for me. The pale Canterbury Bells, which almost ring, for me. The clerodendron tree, with its wonder upon botanical wonder, discovered in Seattle one sunny singing afternoon with a beloved friend... only for me.
