Garden Envy

I have garden envy and I've been sitting here trying to decide if that is a bad thing. I wouldn't say that I'm jealous or "green" with envy. I just sometimes admire others' gardens in a way that makes something stir inside of me. I want what they have. I don't want to give up what I have though. I'm not dissatisfied with what I've got. I just want to make what I've got better or different.

When this feeling stirs inside me, I want to run from the admired garden and start planting furiously in my own. I get filled with ideas that are ready to pour out. I feel creative. I have a realization like "AHA! All I need to do to add this atmosphere to my garden is to plant (fill in plant of the moment here.)" Or, "AHA! All I need to do is hang more wind chimes, build a trellis, etc. etc."

When I walk into a garden that inspires me, I feel like I walked into a great story that someone else wrote. (Have you ever gotten so involved in a reading a narrative, that the fiction felt like it was your real life?) I have become one of the characters of this other story. I have become the GARDENER . But, when I finally do get home, I realize that this alternate world really doesn't fit mine.

I have realized my propensity to project other people's garden taste onto my own space for a while. I began contemplating this phenomenon in earnest yesterday after my daughter and I attended a "garden party" hosted by two of the gardeners I interviewed for my book last year. Their gardens are amazing. They spend a great deal of time in their spaces, have a lot of knowledge, and have transformed their lands into gardeners' paradise.

I walked among the first garden, which was created by Karen, and felt transformed. Her fields are already blooming furiously. My colors are just getting under way. I said to myself while admiring her lupine, "This is missing from my space. I must plant lupine!" My mind wound around the realization that lupine is a missing character in my story. "And anemones! So, this is what you can do with anemones! And listen to those wind chimes in the warm summer breeze. What a wonderful idea to hang them from all the trees." My main source of envy for her garden is of her large space between horse fields and fruit trees. Here she has a garden just stuffed with all kinds of wonderful perennials. At first glance, the space looks like a field of wildflowers, but when one looks closer, one can see that it is a well planned space bursting with color. After viewing this, I then moved on to the second gardener, Emily's space. Her gardens wrap around her house, leading one around the yard to reveal a rolling country landscape in her backyard. Her gardens are very different from Karen's, but equally enticing. "AH! primrose. I don't have those! And her columbine steals the show back here!" My mind furiously wove the gardens into my own story, trying to think of them as the backdrop for my activities in my own yard.

When I arrived home, something felt wrong as soon as I started up the driveway. My property is slanted. It doesn't resemble the spaces of either Karen or Emily at all. Everything is terraced. I can't create a large square, flat wildflower field. I have no rolling hills. The back of my house stares at trees. I sighed as I began pulling my mind out of someone else's story. Then I began admiring my little rose garden and the way I have fairy roses wrapping around a fenced area of the yard. I smiled at the daisies, running along the first terraced wall that welcomes me home. I looked for my favorite plants that feel like old friends. They are characters whom I know quite well and with which I can personally identify.

This works for me. With each bout of garden envy, I learn how to weave another person's creative ideas into my own garden spaces just a little bit. Gardeners have different landscapes that we mold based on our knowledge, experiences and tastes. The landscape, like the gardener must also be the central character of the story, for it can only be molded by the gardener so much. I realized that there were many things about the others' gardens that didn't excite me. I will not be recreating Karen's rock garden for example. It is beautiful, but I don't have rocky crags requiring this kind of gardening.

So, all in all, I think a little garden envy is not a bad thing. I think I have now come to terms with it.

(blogger isn't letting me post photos at the moment. I'll try ot put some up of the gardens later)

A Sense of Place

Emily's gardens are enhanced by a backdrop of ruins. Contoured greenery rolls from her house, down the hill, to where the old hotel once stood. Her gardens lace her backyard with waves of yellow. We looked out together at the scene. As an historian, I was entranced with the place. I pictured train loads of city dwellers traveling up to rural Lyndeborough for weekend get-aways. As the United States left the Victorian era, heading toward World War One, flappers, and Depression, Americans sought comfort in the New Hampshire mountainous regions.

I interviewed Emily last year for my book, "The Gardener's Soul." I spent this morning working on a small footnote for the book related to her hotel ruin. At the Manchester City Library I found two local history books referencing the old place. I also read that many of Lyndeborough's records have been lost to time. Typical. Fire, neglect, and misplacement often create great gaps in the historical record. As an archivist, I spent many years trying to fill the gaps to assist my patrons with their historical searches. As a writer, I know enough to expect the gaps, but am disappointed nonetheless. I shall call the town offices in Lyndeborough and the NH Historical Society on Monday to see if they have additional information, but I am not hopeful.

I know who built the hotel and when it burned down based on the local history books, but do any original records about this place exist? How much of our sense of place is based on historical fact? How much is based on legend? Emily told me what she knew, but where did she get her information? How much of our sense of place is based on what we feel when we stand there and what we see with our own eyes? Why should a gardener care about the history of their landscape?

In "A Place to Remember: Using History to Build Community," Robert Archibald discusses how history is a unifying discipline that can help us understand who we are and how we got here.
He states:
"So, there is a point to history, for history is a process of facilitating conversations in which we consider what we have done well, what we have done poorly, and how we can do better, conversations that are a prelude to action. If the past has enduring meaning and implications, then we as historians must become active conservators: of artifacts and stories and community, of life on this earth and thus implicitly of this earth that sustains life. As we face the past, we are also facing the future." (p.24-25)

So, my two seemingly disparate interests in history and gardening come together naturally as I learn other people's gardening stories and read about the gardening practiced by our ancestors. Though gardening is easily recognized as a scientific discipline and often as an artistic one, and though all gardeners can relate that gardening makes them feel "good," the history of the landscape is overlooked. It should not be. Recognizing that mankind's history is tied to his surroundings makes the cycle of life and nature more poignant. Science, art, history, and the ethereal all play a part in the gardening experience to bring alive a sense of place. We should recognize the benefit of combining all the disciplines. Together they help us make sense of our surroundings and round out the gardening experience. A place like Emily's where history smacks you in the fact with the historical remnants of buildings is magical, but we should see that all landscapes have a historical past to be valued.

Fine Art Photography and the Outdoor Art Exhibit

As the art show outdoor season gears up, I am deciding whether or not I want to sit it out. I've done local shows for the past two years and honestly have not had much success with them. Photography is a funny kind of art. Many people think that they can just pick up a camera and take their own "fine art" pictures because with a click of the camera anyone can have an image of some sort. They wonder why they should pay for someone else's images. "Why should I pay Melissa for a picture of a pansy when I can just go out and photograph the one in my garden?" In other words, many people see painting as a fine art, but don't see photography as such.

The favored "fine art" photographs in my area are images of the country lifestyle - wagons on a hill, barns, fences running through lupine meadows, ducks in a pond. If the location of the spot is identifiable, It makes the image all the more marketable. But do people consider these fine art? (Probably some and not all are deemed fine art by the purchaser. Other people I suspect buy these images because they give them prideful feelings about New England or evoke memories a a specific time in their lives unrelated to the artistic merit of the image itself.) These are not my kind of photos. I don't feel the warm fuzzies looking at rolling hills that lead to a horse in a pasture. I don't feel some sense of nostalgia looking at a picture of the statue of a mill girl with the local Manchester mill yard in the background. I feel as if I've seen them all before. But this is my bias, I suppose. With the risk of offending a few of my fellow photographers, these are the kinds of images that I picture on a postcard, not hanging on the wall of my home. Or, maybe I feel this way just because I know landscape photography is not one of my forte's?

What should a fine art photograph be? Most of the photos that grab me are not the ones I would hang on the walls of my home. I like provocative newsworthy photos. Dorothea Lange is a personal favorite. Her Depression era photographs of people with intense blank stares and hard lined faces capture me. The many textures captured in black and white are nothing short of beautiful fine art. The work of Alfred Stieglitz also captivates me. His great use of line and his ability to make an every day subject something to think about is poetic. Imogen Cunningham is my other favorite historical photographer. I relate best to her probably because she spent so many years in the domestic sphere, fighting to keep her art alive by taking photos of her surroundings. (She also has the fine distinction of producing art that I would hang on my walls.) No one can capture a flower or figure more sensually than she did, yet her news work was just as thought provoking as the rest of her colleagues when she was able to get out there and do it.

In my mind, a fine art photograph should have outstanding composition and should be thought provoking. If you look at my florals and have nothing to say about them, they are not for you. If you look at them and begin to discuss their vibrant color and composition then I've done my job. Better yet if you look at them and say, "I've never known that flower could be so beautiful," or "I've never noticed the detail on those tiny petals," I have made you think about nature. I have chosen the subject of florals because I have a lot to say about it. I just happen to be lucky that it looks good as a decorative object on a wall too.

An artist doesn't want you to take the world around you for granted. She wants you to see things you might not notice if she hasn't communicated it to you through a picture. The camera is just a tool to present a vision, just as a paintbrush is a tool. If you have something to say with a camera, go ahead and do it. There are a lot of talent artists out there with vision and I hope that you are one of them. But, if I do decide to do an art show this year, please don't tell me you could take a picture like mine if you haven't even tried.