June 24, 1997 waiting for F train to work, ~9:45am
Planting is meditation.
Weeding is meditation.
Watering is meditation.
There is spirit
In leaves
In insects
In soil.
Gardening is prayer.
June 24, 1997 waiting for F train to work, ~9:45am
Planting is meditation.
Weeding is meditation.
Watering is meditation.
There is spirit
In leaves
In insects
In soil.
Gardening is prayer.
I just saw a male Magnolia Warbler (additional link) in our neighbor’s apple tree early this evening, just before dusk. He was darting around the tips of the branches. He looked like he was foraging for insects among the leaves.
Because he was at the ends of the branches, instead of the interior, and because I was watching him from our upstairs back porch, I was just a few feet away. I got several good looks at all sides of him, so I’m confident of the identification.
I’ve seen them before, at our old place in Park Slope. This is the first I’ve seen one at our new house. They’re beautiful birds.
[Transcribed from notebook]
Native Roses
Old Roses
[Transcribed from notebook. Summary of gardening work done over a long weekend.]
[Text transcribed and sketch scanned from notebook.]
It’s our first full Spring in our house, in our neighborhood. Trees have been in flower for months now, it seems. Dogwoods are in bloom now. And we’re just coming into the riot of forsythia and azalea.
There were the first snowdrops, the first crocus, the first signs of irreversible Spring. In our front garden, eranthis, crocus, and now, still, the longest-blooming tulips I’ve ever seen, heirloom/antique bulbs all.
As always, my understanding of what the gardens want and need has evolved over the past year. Here’s my current plan:
In the back, I want to put a trellis w/porch swing beneath the maple, angled to face back toward the house, and situated for sun in the winter, leafy shade in the summer. The bench will be 6′, long enough to stretch out on for a nap. The trellis will be 8′, long enough to put the roots of the vines away from the maple’s trunk. Beneath the swing, moss and flagstones. Around the maple, moss, ferns and wildflowers. Mature shrubs will block the views out of the garden from this spot, and onto this spot from outside. A sheltered destination. A sanctuary.
[Partially transcribed from diary for garden references. The rest of it need not concern you!]
[Written while waiting for and riding subway into the city.]
…
I planted seeds today. Actually, the planting was the smallest part of what I did today, but it was the excuse for all I did. Last weekend I cleared all the ivy from the side porch. Today I sifted all the leaf mold and broke up the soil in the narrow strip between the porch foundation and the driveway. Finally, eventually, I planted the sweet pea seeds I started soaking last night before I went to bed. I moved the leaf mold and dirt from the tarp I’d set up on the driveway to the backyard.
I was exhausted. I moved a log to contain one of the new beds I’d just created, reset the adirondack chairs, the ones I’d built … from kits at the apartment [Garden #3 in Park Slope], and collapsed into one of them.
I was too tired to move. For this I was rewarded. Not only did the bird feeder, just 10′ from me, continue [ended abruptly for subway transfer.]
My partner and I drove from our new home in Brooklyn to the New York State Sheep & Wool Festival, held each year at the Dutchess County Fairgrounds in Rhinebeck, New York. It was a looong drive there and back, but the festival was interesting, and great fun. I hope the photos below convey this.
[Transcribed from notebook. Specific date was not recorded.]
We moved into our new house about six weeks ago, the last Thursday in May. This will be my fourth garden in New York City since I moved here 26 years ago, in the Winter of 1979.
House and garden have both been neglected. Both are in need of maintenance, repair, and loving back to their full flower. Both will need work, time, patience, investment. I can envision the trajectories and futures of both.
Particularly, I can imagine bringing the house and garden(s) back together. Each want the other, each need the other. In time, the house will become part of the gardens, grwing out of them, sheltering them, providing the largest bones in the architecture of the garden.
And the house will change to fit and frame the gardens. The siding will be returned to its original design of clapboard and shingle, though how many years and $10K it will take I shudder to comprehend. In longer time, the back will be returned, I believe, to an open porch, the kitchen expanded and opened up to blur the boundary between indoor and outdoor space, between house and garden, between the manufactured and the spontaneous.
Vines will climb up the sides of the screened porches, screening and sheltering them further, filling the porches with fragrance, filtered light, luminous color. Mature shrubs will shade the south side of the house in summer, and draw birds to their berries and hold the snow in winter. Flowers and foliage will spill from window boxes and containers ankling the paths, forcing one to stop to inspect, to smell, to feel, to slow down.
I can see all this as it will be, as it’s coming to be.
[Text transcribed and sketch scanned from notebook.]
Four Gardens:
[Transcribed from notebook and amended.]