The days are getting shorter. I’m going out into the garden later in the morning now. The long season of decline has started, once accepted all things become possible again. In my garden I can say with ease, ‘I’ve made my mistakes and it’s time to accept them and move on.’
No. 30
If only the other areas of my life were so simple.
Change. Within a single day, the mature garden that was here has been cleaned up, rethought and redone. Within my own gardens this is a fact of life. Almost as soon as the end of the first season a garden in planted, I want to change it. Sometimes the change is out of my control. The wonderful leaning American hornbeam branch that anchors one end of the garden is dead. It’s been in decline for years but I’ve left it since I liked it–it’s in danger of falling on the house…it has to come down.
No 29
Change is what I love about gardens…they are in constant flux. I don’t want to know that this or that will be blooming in that particular corner on in that particular month. I don’t want static. I want to experiment and be surprised. I’ll take the good with the bad. The great idea with the one that fails…it’s how I train my mind and eye.
The slowest painters in the world are gone and it’s getting cooler. There is rain in the forecast so maybe, just maybe I’ll be able to make some order out of chaos–this is what a month or more of total neglect and painters looks like. I’ve found that I like the disorder almost as much as I like the intent and wonder how to design controlled disarray…or is that an oxymoron?
No. 28
I never really know what I’m going to write about on these Mondays. I always have the garden image first and then backtrack. I wonder, why did that particular aspect of the garden attract me? I try to be honest in my choice – both from an aesthetic viewpoint as well as being true to the discovery aspects of the project.
Now for the discovery part. I’ve been foggy. My brain full of cobwebs. Mid-summer heat brings me a lack of focus that lifts with the cooler weather. So…on this foggy morning these spiderwebs were the moment.
No. 27
Finally a cool summer morning after weeks of oppressive heat and humidity. The slowest painter in the world should be finished this week and the most damage will be done to the garden–he left the foundation for last. I am at the 1/2 way mark and I’m still not sure what this exercise is about.
Six months of images. Six months of Mondays. Six months of commitment. Unexpected forks in a path that I thought would be somewhat straight forward. The close observation makes me want to tear it all out and start over. The last 26 weeks (actually only 24 since one didn’t have a photo and the other was a photo taken in Buffalo). I am giving up control here too since I’d rather have even rows of three and the last only has two…maybe that’s the lesson.
I went outside today expecting nothing. The garden is in a state of profound neglect. Heat, no appreciable rain, deer and the slowest painters on the face of the universe have had their effect. What I found suprised me.
There are two small stands of this roadside phlox. It was blooming despite years of neglect when I first moved to this house 12 years ago. When I built the garden I left it to honor the garden’s past. It survives everything. It made me smile.
No. 25
I thought I would take a lovely picture my only rose in the garden, but when I looked up I saw something completely different. I manipulated the original photograph in PhotoShop because it’s the linear geometry in this image that I like.
No. 17
The rose (R. ‘Joseph’s Coat) attracted me to this corner but in the end it wasn’t what I was really looking at. Interesting how, with a critical eye and no real plan, things got unstuck and went in a new direction. More and more I’m hoping this project will beckon me down those unstuck paths.
Lush. Wild. Slightly blowzy. Almost of another time and place. I could never make a garden like this for clients. They would think it’s a mess. That’s why I’ve made it for myself.
No. 15
I went out to the garden this morning and found my lilac in bloom a month early. Last week’s heat wave must have forced it. I don’t usually take loving pictures of flowers, but this seems so out of context. In fact, it seems so crazy that I decided to alter the image…after all isn’t this project about observation, exploration and creativity?
Monday 12
March is teasing me. I had hoped there would be some sure signs of spring beyond yellow tipped daffodil shoots pushing through the earth in the garden. Next week the Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ will be the show and then the work will start. For now, though, there are still shadows.
