The Garden Photo Essay

Every garden has a story. The land speaks of past experiences if you listen and look. A photographer must use of all of her senses to make nature reveal its full beauty. As a photographer I like to try to make the space tell me its secrets.

At my favorite garden center, I walk up a quiet path and duck under the drooped arched branches of a tree and discover a large rock beneath. How many children have climbed and perched on this rock? How many kids have played hide-and-seek beneath here while mothers desperately tryed to locate them? How many lovers have found this quiet spot? How many photographers have taken photos here? What did this place look like before the proprietor of the nursery built this garden? I peek out between shrubbery and the sunlight glows on a large field of echinacea. This place feels spiritual...dreamlike. Memories I don't have come flooding to me....other people's memories from an active imagination. The place has a lot to say to me about relationships, solitude and peace. How do I convey these words without using them.

How do I convey everything I feel here? How do I make my viewers understand the calmness I feel on this path? Sometimes it can be done in one photograph. Sometimes the photo essay captures the whole story. A series of pictures is a story without words.

Another place... Joppa Hill Farm in Bedford NH is just a few miles from my home. Since we moved here three years ago, my daughter and I have taken trips to see the animals there. We walk the fields in search of wildflowers. We run through the tall grasses and laugh in the sunshine. I want to remember this forever. I dress her for the occasions. She wears pretty dresses that catch the sunlight. Our photoessay is a long running one. Each visit is a photo essay in itself, but each successive visit adds to the story. I will remember my daughter growing up here.

How Does Gardening Soothe Your Soul?

I finished the second draft of my book proposal for The Gardener's Soul: Nature's Path Toward Inner Peace this morning. I am ready to send it on to two new readers. (These are innocent friends who have agreed to take a look without knowing what they are getting themselves into. Or, perhaps they do know, but are too kind to refuse?)

I sat down with a cup of chamomile tea at my side and felt the jitters of possible rejection. Yet, as I dove into my subject I could feel myself relaxing. Was it the chamomile tea kicking in? I think rather it was the thoughts of warmth and the garden calming my soul.

My book's central focus is that the garden is a place to commune with nature and soothe your soul. I know how it soothes mine and I met fourteen other gardeners last summer who expressed how it soothes theirs. Here is what I know:

• Being out in nature reminds me of a bigger picture and helps me reflect on what is really important in life.
• Gardening helps many acknowledge a higher power and/or to seek spiritual enlightenment.
• Feeling the warm sunshine on my face makes me happy. There is no need to explain this further. The sun just makes me feel happy.
• The vibrant colors of the garden also make me feel happy. I have always been attracted to color.
• The act of creating a personal space in the garden makes people feel content and boosts self esteem.
• Gardening encourages creativity in the garden and provides inspiration out of the garden.
• Growing our own food makes one feel closer to the natural world and more in touch with what we put in our bodies.
• The sights, sounds and smells of the garden refresh our spirits.
• The creatures we encounter in the garden also soothe us and make us feel closer to nature.
• Experimenting in the garden feeds our natural curiosity and encourages more curiosity about the world.
• Gardening encourages a nurturing instinct.
• Gardening encourages a playful spirit.
• In the garden we often feel connections to loved ones and many generations past.

How does gardening soothe your soul?

Children in the Garden

Preparing for spring planting, I'm trying to find new ways to incorporate child friendly activities for the garden. We started last year's growing season with an Easter basket of spring gardening tools. A friend of mine and I gave our girls seeds, garden gloves, garden shoes, and trowels mixed in with their holiday candy. Every year, another friend of mine uses the holiday to welcome spring by planting trees with her girls. Children arrive with an innate appreciation and curiosity for nature. Now is the time to help it along.

Direct contact with nature allows a child to explore and develop a keen sense of environmentalism without even knowing it. This year, one of our projects is to design fairy houses. We have three large peonies in our backyard and recently learned that the Barbie fairy Elina lives in a peony. We will be designing our houses to place under the peonies in the hope that Elina and her friends decide to move in. We will also be planting a sunflower patch where my daughter and her friends can have a clubhouse. Including friends in the process spreads the excitement. Some of the other four-year-olds have been invited to pick things for our garden too. They will all garden together.

Last year, I made a shaded reading garden for my little bookworm. We bought a special bench and animal statues to place by our brook. My daughter helped pick it appropriate plants for the shade. We learned together about what plants like the type of environment we had prepared for them My daughter also helped plan the vegetable garden and chose the types of veggies she wanted from a catalogue. Tomatoes were not on her list. She refused to eat the ones we bought at the store. I planted three varieties so she could learn the difference between fresh tomatoes and store bought. Tomatoes are now one of her favorite foods. The bonus about involving kids in planting food is that they learn from where their food comes, which helps them make more informed choices in the kitchen.

The key to involving kids in the gardening process is allowing them full participation. Activities from choosing plants to picking the harvest awakens a child's curiosity and makes them feel grownup. Another activity we do together is picture taking. My daughter and I love spring and summer nature walks. Last year I bought her a Fisher Price camera that she can drop without worry. We will walk in the neighborhood to discover wildflowers growing on the side of the road with cameras in hand. The camera encourages curiosity and discovery by making us look closer at the world around us. While seeking good pictures, we also find good subjects - bees on flowers, tiny mushrooms in swampy areas, birds nests in trees.


Any more ideas for involving kids in this process are welcome! Please spread the spring planting fever!

Marketing a Perverse Reality

A friend of mine had a copy of Oprah sitting on her counter. Now, I should start by saying I am a supermarket tabloid headline junkie. I love laughing at the absurdity of what I read while online at the supermarket. I actually seek out the lines that have the most tabloids. The fodder is just too much to pass up. Take for instance the headline about Tom Cruise's child Suri that I read last week on Star Magazine's cover. It read "Inside Suri's Strange World! No TV, NO Happy Meals!..." My goodness! Is America so caught up with its junk food and the boob tube that these are the things that concern us most about Scientology?

Anyway, today I glanced through Oprah. I had never before read the inside of the magazine. I only chuckled over the ridiculousness of having the same woman's picture on a magazine week after week. I have nothing against Oprah. As a librarian, I love the way her book club turns people onto reading. I like how she can energize the populace. I admire what she has done with her life and her seeming desire to help others. I admire that she can get away with naming a magazine after herself AND having her own picture on the cover...but I digress...The thing that struck me about Oprah's magazine was the ads inside. I especially loved the obviously photoshopped make-up ad that said "Nothing is too close," as if the pleasantly softened complexion was the model's real skin. The ad about wrinkle cream where some of the model's wrinkles were taken out and only the most attractive laugh lines were left in was a hoot and a half. But I am a photographer. I know that non-photographers know about photoshop, but how many understand exactly what it can do and how it is being used?

At the risk of giving away secrets, here is one of my more popular still lifes:

You may not be able to see it well in this thumbnail. The colors are vibrant. the details blurred and softened. Harsh light and shadows have been altered. Contrast has been boosted. The image has been cropped.

Here is the original:

A pretty image can be polished to perfection. I always keep in the back of my mind that what I see may not be what is real. Photography walks a fine line. As photographers, we have a duty to record reality - to show others the truth that we discover. Sometimes that truth is beautiful, at other times it is painful or horrific. But, as photographers we are also artists. New technologies give us the ability to play with reality to share a personal vision of loveliness. Our viewers must be aware of our abilities to play with reality. Viewers of photographs should be prepared to make informed judgments of the images before them. Photography should not be trickery to sell products or a perverse view of reality.

Garden Diary

I continue reading Joyce McGreevy's book Gardening by Heart. I am wowed by her outlook and pleasant prose. McGreevy's writing prompts my own words. She has wonderful ideas worth repeating and discussing.

This morning I woke to the sun shining before 7AM. It struck me as something special. My husband had not yet left for work and it was not pitch black! When did this happen? When did dark mornings give way to promises of spring just around the corner?

As Kevin showered, I stayed in my warm bed heated by the lovely heated mattress pad he bought for me. (We still must keep the heated mattress pad on because though winter has relented a bit on sunshine, it has not relented enough to let the heat accompany it.) I picked up McGreevy's book and read the cahpter "Summer's Over When You See the Naked Ladies." (Doesn't that chapter title just make you want to run right out to read this book?!) In the chapter, McGreevy discusses the value of keeping a nature diary.

I was immediately excited, recalling the diary I kept of my first garden in Londonderry NH. I gardened on a basically bare plot of land and built something I found beautiful. In the diary I recorded my first stabs at gardening on my own. Luckily this morning I had the presence of mind to wait until my daughter awoke, rather than running right by her door to dig through my office for my treasured gardening journal. I continued to read...

"Keeping a journal is as open to possibilities as gardening itself. There is no one way to do it. It can bloom along the margins of an existing journal or apoointment book. It can command a place of its own, tellising sentences like sweet peas along the blue lines of a notepad or spreading out in all directions on the virgin ground of a blank book..."

The diary can include sketches and photographs. Some days I write essays about my blooms and work. Other days I write one word entries. "HOT!" I skip whole years of my gardening diaries. Sometimes they become blended with my "regular" every day diary.

I have been a journal-keeper just about all my life. In college one of my favorite classes focused on the function of journal writing for women throughout history. I still own my very first diary from 1982 with Strawberry Shortcake on the cover. In it I recorded the wonders of a seventh grader's life.

"My Dad wants me to be on the basketball Team.
I bought some newts today. I named them Harvey, Newton, Freckles and Baseball. I put three guppies in with them.
Should I ask Rob if he wants to see 'Dark Crystals' with me. It sounds like a good movie. With Rob there it would be even better."

(AH! Youth. Luckily, the budding archivist in me had the presence of mind to date the diary.)

As with any diary, a garden diary should record your realizations, whims, and fantasies. It will help you remember important gardening events in your life. It will help you grow as a gardener, encouraging you to experiment, reminding you of past failed ventures and successes. The journal is also something fun to examine on a cold winter day, reminding you why you are so excited for spring to get here, helping you pause to better see the beauty you can create in your own backyard.

Weeds

I'm going to grow weeds this summer. In Gardening by Heart, Joyce McGreevy takes a chapter to extol the benefits of weeds as garden fillers and edibles. She discusses how plants generally regarded as weeds, such as the pale blue flax, sometimes have colors that are difficult to find in catalogs. She also discusses how weeds such as dandelions can be used in salads or made into teas for consumption. Many weeds help protect other plants in the garden by warding off bugs, encouraging beneficial wildlife, or offering shelter beneath their foliage for tender seedlings.

I'm going to be choosy about the weeds I let flourish. I am not a fan of violets. These thrive in my garden. I remember as a child digging them out of a neighbor's garden as an afternoon chore. Perhaps if I did not have that memory, I would favor the violet, but I forever have WEED and violet imprinted on my brain. And, despite the temptation of tasting a dandelion salad, I will not be allowing any dandelions in the yard for obvious reasons. I take my daughter to the local farm, which has a big field, to grab stems with puffy white heads that take flight when she blows on them.

To me, there are also flowers that others do not consider weeds that are weeds in my yard. The long stemmed variety of phlox are a big no-no in my gardens. There was a barrel full of blighted phlox when I moved to this home three years ago. I have been pulling out the stuff ever since. I see its tiny leaves poking out of the ground and I pounce on it. "AHA! OUT, OUT! You are not welcome here!"

I found it funny this past summer when some of the gardeners I interviewed for The Gardener's Soul ranted about ridding their gardens of weeds. The funniest part was that they knew they were ranting and found it funny themselves. I learned that some gardeners attacked the weeds with military might and deliberation. They could not stand to see the weeds in their gardens. And yet, other gardeners were perfectly fine with weeds. Gently removing ones that weren't to their tastes. Some would even leave a whole garden to the weeds for one season, knowing that they could always return to that patch of land to work it the following year. I realized last year that I had been removing "weeds" for years that if left alone they would have turned into something glorious - tomato plants to add interest to the perennial garden or Queen Anne's lace to add a delicate backdrop to my handpicked specimen plants.

Two of my big planned projects this year are to plant a wildflower garden and to introduce a clover lawn to the yard. My daughter and I began our wildflower garden last year by spreading seeds from milkweed pods. I am anxious to see if the plants come up. There is nothing more heavenly than the smell of milkweed and the sight of the monarchs they attract. There is also nothing more luxurious than the clover lawn a gardener showed me last year. (I think I'll write about clover lawns another day.) I am figuring out how I can fit weeds within my garden scheme and I'm changing my perspective about them.

My favorite local garden center Uncanoonuc Mountain Perennials offers many native plants. One great benefit is that they are easy to grow and quickly fill your garden space. Last year I got on the native plant bandwagon and purchased Joe Pye Weed. (I'm sure I have other natives in my gardens that I could name if I thought about, but these I bought with the intention of buying native.) These native plants (aka weeds) should thrive in my yard. They deserve some appreciation for that alone. If I can prize my choosy roses, why should I not prize my less fussy (better tempered?) plants as well? These natives don't demand attention, I should be proud to show them off as one would show off a well behaved child.

Gardening by Heart

I am reading Joyce McGreevy's book Gardening by Heart: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Garden. the book encourages everyone to garden and discusses the benefits of gardening for one's well-being. It offers advice for how to become a gardener, how to learn to stop and "smell the roses" so to speak.

McGreevy's directions and observations make me think of the gardeners I met last summer for my The Gardener's Soul project. McGreevy discusses the same themes that have come up over and over again with my gardeners:

• A garden brings happiness.
• Any plant you tend can be your garden.
• Gardening is a way for us to connect with nature and find respect for the earth.
• Gardening itself is a process. It is the act of gardening that brings us joy.
• A gardener's character is seen in the garden he/she creates.
• Our lives are filled with gardens. We just need to open our eyes and look for them
• Experience is important in the garden. We need only to pay attention to nature to be a good gardener.
• Bring all of your senses to your garden to really experience it.
• "Find what thrives for you and grow it."
• Find the corner of the garden that speaks to your soul and cherish it.
• Find a connection to nature every day, even if only for a limited time.
• We connect to generations in the garden.

When in the garden, I work hard. I sweat. I step back and take a quick look. Then, I dive in again and work some more. When I am all through, I grab my little girl and we walk around the yard together, just like my dad did with me when I was a girl. We examine plants, smells and design. We frolic. (Isn't that a lovely word? Just made for the garden...) For me, the cap on the gardening experience is writing about what I've planted or grabbing my camera to take photographs of my work. From seed to photo completes my gardening experience. The camera helps me stop and smell the roses. I remember the experience better when I had a camera in my hand to record it.