Lightbox
“Do you love me?” she asks, and I pretend to sleep.
I feel her snuggle into my shoulder, her right arm resting feather-light on my side, her head nestled under my chin. I hear her breathing as she falls into an uneasy sleep in my arms.
My thoughts drift.
We were walking by the river. The evening descended with a subtle shift in the air as the shimmering heat dissipated from the ground around us. We were not so close to the water as to be in danger, but close enough to hear the loud night noises the water animals make when the heat of day has passed.
Whether it was the moisture from the heavy humid air or her sweat, it didn’t matter. Her soft skin glistened as the rays from the setting sun caressed her. I traced my fingers first along her neck, across her firm shoulders and then down her arms. As my fingers touched the liquid on her skin, I drank in the feel of her, the scent of her. She laughed up at me, white teeth flashing the smile she used so often to taunt me. She turned her body towards mine as she reached up. Her mouth tasted faintly of licorice, of the candy I had brought her, her favorite. I pulled her arms from around my neck and we resumed our walking. My heart drummed, and my breathing quickened at how easily her kiss could affect me.
We are both young, barely eighteen, so I had taken for granted the athletic youth of her body, her fresh smile, just as I’m sure she had taken the same for granted with me. Having known each other all of our lives, there had never been a question; we were meant for each other. As soon as we were old enough to talk of such things, we had planned to marry. We had been formally promised to one another since we were fifteen. Perhaps we are separated spirits from another lifetime, who after searching across the centuries have finally found one another, together again, after a long journey apart and lifetimes of waiting.
Waiting is what I have been doing here while she sleeps. The thin cushion of the mat is pressed flat against the cement floor beneath us. Flies drone lazily in the heat of the day and I brush them aside. The shadows deepen inside but offer faint comfort from the glaring sun visible through the open window. A car horn sounds, traffic moves as if in another world, a world unaware of us lying there together. My mind drifts to another street, yet another image of her.
This time she was crying. I had come to her house to take her for a walk by the river, but her mother turned me away. As the door closed, the sound of her sobs leaked out of the windows and the doors filling the air around me. People looked at the house as they walked by and scurried to the far side of the street, as if her sobs could touch them, contaminate them. Nothing could keep me from seeing her.
I crept around to the side of the house, knocked on her window and tried to peer in, but the curtains were drawn. I called her name, and the sobs subsided. Celie came to the window and from her swollen eyes I saw she had been crying for hours, perhaps for days. She said I must leave and never come back. I knew she didn’t mean that; how could she? What could have happened in the few short weeks I had been away to make her say such a thing?
That is but one more memory I set aside, unwilling to go further, knowing the pain it will bring. My arm pricks with pins and needles from having rested too long on one side. As I shift, she awakens, again.
She looks at me with the liquid brown eyes I know so well, “Do you love me?”
It seems almost ridiculous, but I still pretend to not have heard. It must be obvious to her that I heard her question, even though her voice is barely a whisper. Yet, she does not beg me to answer; she just looks up at me and then wearily closes her beautiful eyes, again, and drifts back off to sleep.
What is it to love these days? Who can love? Who can you allow yourself to love? They say one in five people in my country are infected. They are called the walking dead. What do those numbers mean – one person in ten, one in one million? I believe they are wrong, their estimate far too low. For me it is one in one, the only person I have ever loved, and it is enough to make me suspect every other person who comes near enough to touch me.
Celie and I had believed if we were true to each other and shared our love only with one another we would be safe. The world around us might be turned upside down and melting away like chocolate on a hot summer day, but we would be safe in our own world of love. The two men who raped Celie had no regard for what they destroyed; they will never know our loss. Was it purely an act of physical release for them? I can’t believe that was the case, surely it must have been more. I need to believe it was more. Perhaps they too felt powerless in this world, with a burning, urgent need, a desire to feel again their strength, their virility, to demonstrate themselves to be still alive, to mark even one small corner of the world with their power. Perhaps they sought retribution and punishment, one anonymous woman as a simple proxy for another. Or, perhaps they even dreamed of a cure, the hopeless and futile belief that sex with a virgin could rid them of their own disease.
It frightens me that their actions make some pitiable sense to me; that I can almost understand their needs, their longings, their desperation. I too would give anything do almost anything to change what has happened. I look down at Celie resting there in my arms and pull her closer to me, but she does not stir. She is like a small bird in my hands.
That night by the river, Celie and I both knew our time together was disappearing. Drying up like the moisture from the mudflats evaporates in the hot summer sun. But, with her still shining smile and tempting laughter, we were ourselves together as we had been before, but only for a moment.
We both know all too well it is a dreadful risk to choose either to not know or to forget.
I feel as weary and restless as the light dry wind that stirs the late afternoon dust. I must have shifted yet again. This time Celie awakens. Once more she looks up at me and asks, “Do you love me?”
Each day for weeks I have come to the clinic where Celie lays waiting to die. Each day I crawl onto the mat beside her. Lying next to her in the heat and the stench, I wrap myself around her, cradling her now shriveled body in my arms. She waits for my answer to her question as she wakes each day to ask me again. She will not let go until I answer.
I will never answer.
Holiday Cookie Traditions
Some of our best traditions begin quietly, unassumingly. It seems to be something you will do once, a necessity, a lark. Then, somehow, it sticks.
I’m seventeen and in my Mom’s kitchen baking cookies for my in-laws. It’s the only present I can afford to give them for Christmas. He has a big family. I love them all. They love me. That year, I joined their Christmas party bearing baskets of fresh baked cookies. I won’t say that it won their hearts. Truthfully, their hearts were probably already won. Still, I know that it pulled us closer together, created a special link, especially with his Mom.
Over the years, I’ve made cookies by myself, with my nieces, with friends, with my Mom. One of my favorite memories was making cookies with my niece the year I stormed down to her house to gather her up when we discovered, just before Christmas, that my sister had left her all alone and temporarily moved away. My niece was just sixteen. Bringing her home with me for the holidays and making cookies together was my way of telling her she was loved, there was a home if she needed it, a place where she could feel safe.
Fast forward thirty-five years. I haven’t baked cookies in probably a decade. Calories, dieting, divorce all played a part in the demise of my cookie-baking at Christmas. Still, somehow there were still always cookies each Christmas. I’ve been the happy recipient of cookies from the pair of ladies who have cleaned for me this last decade. Each Christmas they leave a sampling of cookies. The last several years they have left me a delicious cookie previously unknown to me. Anise flavored, thin, imprinted cookies with a light dusting of powdered sugar. This year, there was a plate of goodies, but none of the anise flavored cookies that I had come to love.
What’s a girl to do? Armed with the internet, I tracked them down. I now know the mystery cookies are the Italian favorite, Pizzelles. So, on the Thursday three days before Christmas, I decide that it will be a cookie year, once again. The centerpiece will be those Pizzelles.
My house isn’t decorated for Christmas, there’s no Christmas music playing, but, my nose knows it is Christmas. My cookie gift boxes this year are filled with pizzelles, candied ginger rosemary shortbread, blueberry polenta cookies (why not another Italian experiment) and the ever faithful fruitcake cookies. Not a big sampling. Not my best year. Still, all in all quite a satisfying afternoon.
My cookies will travel to my ex-husband’s family, we remain close after all these years. I still love them. Amazingly, they still love me. I’ll deliver the cookies to them on Christmas day. But this year, my cookies will also find their way to Saint Louis, to Mike’s family, as he drives out to join them for the Holidays. I sent cookies home with Mike’s son and daughter-in-law, my house a stop on their Christmas journey to visit family. And, in an odd twist, for some reason, I sent a box with the kids to Mike’s ex in-law’s home, which was their next stop. His mother-in-law had hip replacement surgery this fall and surely hasn’t felt able to do all the baking Mike has told me she used to do. I’m not sure how she will feel about receiving a box of cookies from her ex son-in-law’s girlfriend. I’ve met her before and she’s a good woman, loving, accepting. I expect they will make her smile. After all, there is something unassuming, unpretentious about a gift of homemade cookies. They say so simply: Here’s a little of my heart to touch a little of yours.
May you and your family enjoy the tastes and the pleasures of the Holiday Season. May you remember that some of the best traditions have very humble beginnings. And, after thirty-five years, you can rest assured that they are truly traditions, when they remain lodged firmly in your heart, and quickly flower (flour?) again even after more than a decade of absence.
Happy Holidays!
A few pizzelle recipes:
http://www.post-gazette.com/food/20010524mailbo.asp
Also, if the polenta cookies intrigued you, they taste a little like shortbread:
http://thesweetgourmand.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/christmas-cookies-1-zaletti/
Garden dreams lead to a beautiful backyard cottage
All of my garden dreams begin in the winter. They may start with a catalogue, lush with photographs of beautiful plants. Perhaps an hour or so of internet searches. A new book might be the trigger. They come together over coffee by the window. I put on my sweater and walk out to the screen porch, then up into the garden. I know the chill I feel will disappear soon. My daffodils are beginning to peak their heads up through the dirt. I brush away a few leaves, then a few more. Right there, I add to my New Year’s resolutions, my list of will do projects. This year, a garden shed.
For five long years, I had planned to create a garden shed. Mike eventually grew weary of my musings and had long ago stopped listening when I spoke about “the shed”. In my imagination, it has taken so many different shapes. One year, in Aiken, I took photos of a shed created purely out of salvage windows and doors, all glass. That was the design. I was sure. I considered that design for months, even called a builder to discuss the possibilities. I looked at greenhouses, conservatories, sheds at Home Depot and Lowe’s. I reviewed hundreds of designs I found on the Internet, reviewed numerous Bespoke Shed Design photo galleries. Read nearly every blog post or article on garden sheds. I stopped at small building sale yards along the highway. The truth: I didn’t know what I wanted.
As is often the case, it was a winter morning over coffee and the meditative walk through the garden that unstuck me. That day, I firmly set my intention. Form followed intent, and I began to draw out the design. I had an idea of my budget, but I had to wait for my tax refund, save a little money. Still, I was on my way, armed with a simple sketch on graph paper. I eagerly marked inspiration pages from my Sunset book, Ideas for Great Backyard Cottages. After all, it wasn’t just a shed I was building, definitely more like a backyard cottage.
Imagining my garden shed coming to life thrilled and excited me. My thoughts were filled with romantic scenes of picnics on the patio in front of the shed, an arbor shading the table. Lush plantings surrounded me, there was a hammock nearby. With each call to a builder, each discussion the ideas began to slip away. Even with a tough economy, it soon became evident most builders were not nearly as excited by my shed project as I was. When I suggested in order to save money we would use salvage doors and windows, they invariably rolled their eyes. Many wouldn’t call me back, some simply gave outrageous estimates. In desperation, my landscaper brought over someone he knew who was a “builder”. Finally, someone who wanted to take on my project! I ignored the hint of alcohol on his breath as we shook hands on the deal.
I raise my right hand and solemnly swear I will never, ever, ever build a house. If a shed can be this much trouble, there is no hope for me in house building
Fast forward to today. It’s December and I’m putting the finishing touches on what Mike now calls the Taj Ma-shed. In the end, it cost nearly twice what I had originally imagined. It took 6 months to find someone willing to build it and nearly 4 months to build. The builder I worked with did deliver, but not without many painful issues along the way for both of us. What he lacked in style, he did make up in perseverance as he finished my project despite personal health issues he faced. As with all projects, some thing remained undone or just weren’t done right. Those are now being corrected and resolved by handyman extraordinaire, Jerry Broderick.
My shed hardly resembles my original idea, but does “roughly” match the last sketch. Some things are just as I imagined, even better. The shed windows made from half sashes of salvaged, nine pane, wood windows look perfect. They match the windows of my house and cost only $5 per sash. The shed is filled with light from the salvaged French doors, antique front door system and two skylights. The cabinets that Mike salvaged from one of his apartments and which sat in my garage for four years are so perfect I don’t even want to repaint them. Pegboard and tools fill the walls. I have to admit, I had never actually imagined the peg board. My fantasy shed didn’t really have tools in it. However, my real shed houses my amazingly large collection of gardening tools and my garage is now deliciously empty, almost cavernous. The shed size is a perfect 10X16. A happy by product is that it is now large enough to house my kayak, which hangs from the rafters via a hoist system I had for years and never installed. Let’s just say it is now potting, garden and boat shed all in one.
It is a joy each time I walk up through the garden to my new shed. The patio tucked under the dogwood and shade trees is a great vantage point from which to view the garden. A firepit and comfy chairs also makes it a great place for crisp afternoons and evenings. This week, Jerry will finally install my hammock.
I now feel magically drawn to the far reaches of my garden and to my garden cottage. Even from inside my home, I can feel its gravitational pull. It reminds me of the most important design principles of garden paths: They must have a beginning, transitions and a destination. My garden paths have been there over ten years, since we initially planted the garden. Now, it is as if all these years they had only been waiting for this destination to complete them.
P.S.
I would be remiss if I didn’t thank Steve Mann for all the great vision and assistance he brought to this project. Without him, it would never have been accomplished. When Steve and I collaborate on projects, somehow he takes them to a new level and they nearly always exceed my expectations. My new patio is a perfect example of that. Thank you Steve.
Also, a big thanks to Joe at Old House Salvage. Without his patience and great collection of windows and doors, I could never have ever afforded to build the shed. I promise to send you pictures.
http://www.theoldhousesalvage.com/
One of your neighbors just might be an artist. Who Knew?
Personally, I’d always imagined that the artists in Greenville, SC (maybe all 10-20 of them?) lived downtown in chic or quirky apartments. I had considered that there might even be an elusive artist’s enclave, where those few people of special talents lived and mixed with one another, but not with the rest of us artistically challenged folk. What I hadn’t expected was to learn Greenville’s artists are everywhere, and there’s, literally, hundreds of them.
One weekend a year, in early November, Greenville’s artists open their studios, and sometimes their homes, to the public. Whether you’re in the mood to buy, just look or simply to meet your neighbors, Open Studios offers a glimpse into the rich and varied working artist community that calls Greenville home.
It’s the 1st weekend in November and I open the paper to see the map and advertisement for Open Studios. I had forgotten it was this weekend. We have other plans, our schedule tight. I promise Mike we will take only a few minutes for one stop nearby. “Just the potters, that’s all. I promise. Please come with me.”
As we pull away from the Clark’s, we tell ourselves we will visit a few more artists, just the ones in the immediate neighborhood. They’re sort of on our way home. We won’t go far. We visit a jeweler and then stop by to meet a young Indie Craft artist. Both artists live in homes that I’d admired on my neighborhood walks. Something in the character of their homes, their gardens should have suggested that these were the homes of talented artists. Okay, we’re hooked. We spread out to Taylors and then to Greer before calling it a day.
The studios we visited were each unique – a closet area turned into a studio, the entire 1st floor of a home taken over by painting and paints, a light filled open studio built in the backyard. I can’t say that I liked everything we saw, and some artists were clearly more talented than others. Still, each visit was a chance to meet a new artist, to hear their story, to admire their work, to encourage and thank them for sharing, to silently hope and pray that even more creative people find Greenville a welcoming place to live and work.
My neighborhood walks are not the same any more. I know a few more of my neighbors, but, more importantly, I now know that artists live amongst us. It makes me feel just a little richer, a little more proud to call Greenville home.
Here’s the scoop:
• When: 1st weekend in November
• Cost: FREE!
• Location: all over Greenville county, a little more concentration downtown
• You can pick up a map from the Greenville Journal, Greenville News, at any of the studios and also numerous locations downtown.
• You can use the map to scan the list of artists and carefully plot your destinations, or you can simply follow the bright yellow signs when you see them and just be surprised by what you find.
• Additional gallery showings downtown, round out the tour.
Note: The painting above is by local artist, Carrie Brown. She and her husband Bill were the original owners of my home. I bought this at my first Open Studios, because I wanted to have a piece of her art back in the home that she and Bill built.
Related Links:
Evil
Evil is all around us, only a step away
We brush by it as we walk down the street
The unseen and unknown neighbor watches us silently
Blanketed warmly by our cocoon of naïveté
We move blithely along
When the cocoon is pierced and evil reaches in to touch us
It is always dreadfully close
We find that it is our brother, our lover, our child,
Or even the friend we met last week
We ourselves may be but one lucky generation away
Our own evil thankfully dissolved
In the mixed blood of our parents
Leaving only a trace, a hint,
That we smother inside
This poem was written to introduce a novel I’m presently writing.
Serial
Who saw what you did that day
I did, I did
Who believed you’d hurt me that way
I did, I did
Who fought you scrambled and scratched
I did, I did
Who realized soon she was outmatched
I did, I did
Who left traces of her blood and bone
I did, I did
Who lay the winter in the field alone
I did, I did
Who else saw the monster you were
No one
This poem was inspired by a series on the BK Killer.
Heart Math
Addition of our love
Multiplication of years
Fractions of truth
Division of lies
Subtraction of me
The Calculus of you.
Keeping a Garden Journal
You may be considering keeping a garden journal or have already decided that keeping a garden journal would be useful to you. Maybe you even have one or two blank journals that you received as a gift resting on the bookshelf gathering dust and are wondering how you could use them. Maybe you’ve purchased a garden organizer, only to find that it didn’t have the elements that you needed for your specific interests. Or, maybe you’re looking for the perfect gardening gift for the gardener in your life. Then, this article is for you. In this article we will explore five different styles of garden journals and give you some practical steps on how to get started with a garden journal of your own.
Most commercial garden journal products or garden organizers combine more than one style. However, you will find that they tend to be primarily designed to best serve one specific garden journaling need. While you’re reading this article, take the time to make some notes about your own personal gardening interests and goals. By reflecting on your own personal interests and becoming familiar with these five basic styles, you will be better equipped to choose a single style or combine styles to create your own personal garden journal.
Regardless of your gardening goals or interests, if you are a gardener, you can benefit from keeping a garden journal. Keeping a garden journal can help you become a better, more knowledgeable and more insightful gardener.
Personal view journal
In a personal view journal you may include the thoughts, feelings and emotions that you have about the gardens that you have visited, created or are dreaming to create. This is a very free and unstructured style of journal keeping and can truly get your creative gardening juices flowing. This can be an exciting way to express your feelings and a rewarding way to catalogue the trials and tribulations of life through a gardener’s eyes. A personal view journal may be purely textual, but it may also include photographs, small paintings, watercolors or sketches. You may even choose to insert small mementos or pressings into the pages of your journal.
Often the physical journal that you choose will be a beginning point for your inspiration. It may be leather-bound journal with beautiful engraving if you’re looking for a masculine and formal tone or it may be a small hardbound journal with a beautiful and delicate floral motif on the cover for a more feminine style. You may even consider a journal that is made of natural or recycled products to help put you more in touch with the earth, about which you write. The pages to your journal can be lined, if you need some help in controlling your wandering script. Alternatively, you can let your writing become a form of art as your handwriting washes over the pages. You can even choose a journal with a plain or blank cover and then decorate it yourself with dried flowers or pressed flowers from your own garden. Scent is one of the strongest links to emotion and memory. You can enrich sensory and emotional experience of journaling by lightly scenting your journal pages with oils or inserting dried herbs in between the pages.
Today, many people choose to journal online. This is a great way to capture and share your own inspirational thoughts on gardening with others. You may choose to create your own personal website, combining your written journal entries with special photographs. If you don’t have the technical interest for creating your own site, there are several websites that host garden journals for members or visitors to their sites. Another option is to use a digital photo/image hosting site to host your pictures and record your journal entries as comments related to the photos.
Your personal view journal could be a point in time snapshot of what is happening in your garden and life for a single season and a special garden, or it may span multiple years and multiple gardens. If you adopt this form of journaling, you will often find that the garden inspires you to reflect on your beliefs and values and you may find your writing becoming increasingly expansive. As often the case with a journal, you may even find some form of therapy in writing down your feelings and thoughts. My own experience with such a garden journal spanned three different homes, a husband, a divorce, a period of being alone and then discovery of a new love life. When I read back through it now, it offers a beautiful reflection of everything that was happening in my life through those changes and serves somewhat as a metaphor for many of the more significant life lessons that I have learned. Now, I find the re-reading of that journal to be just as rewarding as the writing of it. By the way, I started this journal on a rainy Saturday by writing in a blank journal that I had received as a gift and that had been gathering dust in my bookcase for over a year.
Don’t forget that journaling can be an excellent practice and habit to teach children. There are a few fun garden journals for children where they can chronicle their own gardening adventures and the incomparable experience of watching things grow.
Journal of inspiration
This can be a journal that you keep about beautiful gardens that you have seen or visited. Your journal of inspiration can be incorporated into a broader travel journal, can be about nature in general or can be specific to the subject of gardening. This may be a written journal, but it can also include photographs, drawings, brochures, magazine articles or catalogue pages. With this type of journal you are not just recording what you’ve done or felt, but you are focusing on the aspirations that you have for your garden.
This type of journal may be something as simple and informal as a folder that you keep where you toss any picture or notes about what you wish your garden to become. It may also be something as rich as a full color web site. It could include long lists of proposed plans and phases that you intend to pursue over the course of the next several years.
If your garden journal relates to visiting really famous, or not so famous, public or private gardens, you may include other mementos of your trip such as ticket stubs, receipts or brochures. Formally chronicling your visits as a guest to these beautiful gardens can be a great source of inspiration for your own garden as you enjoy beautiful spots where truly master gardeners have worked their magic.
Also, while you’re there, don’t forget to take pictures of the gardeners, garden workers and/or their tools. Often the hands, faces and tools of gardeners can tell as beautiful a story and be as inspirational as the gardens they care for. If your inspirational journal is a photographic one, please be sure that permission to take and use photos has been granted by your hosts, especially if you intend to post them on a website.
Vegetable and Harvesting Journal
Until her death, my mother used to recount the story of one particular summer when my father had planted green beans, as usual, in our family garden. She continued to chastise him, even 30 years later, for the number of green beans that came out of that small garden during that year. She reminded him, in her scolding, that on one particular Saturday she had to pick and “put up” a No. 2 washtub of green beans. If you’re not familiar with a No. 2 washtub, think small bathtub. Now, if my father had kept a garden journal, he would likely have known specifically which variety of beans had been planted, he would have known how many rows and plants had been planted, what the weather had been that summer and whether her story was really true, or if over 30 years of telling it the tale had grown from a small basket to a bushel to a No 2 washtub!
Keeping a vegetable and harvesting journal can really help the curious (or competitive) vegetable gardener maximize the flavor and production of the vegetables that are grown. Sometimes gardeners continue to grow the same varieties and use the same seed sources year after year, simply too timid to experiment. By keeping a vegetable and harvesting journal, you can record how each of the choices that you made performed in your garden. As most good gardeners know, the difference in soil and micro-climate can make a big difference in the yield and flavor of produce. To consistently get the better testing and bigger tomato than your co-worker, you may have to keep a few notes and try a few different things from one year to the next. Of course, you can always keep this journal in a secure place and consider your own garden trade secret journal.
In this type of journal, you will want to pay particular attention to soil preparation. When did you plow, how did you amend the soil and what type of fertilizer did you use. You will also be particularly interested in specific issues about pests and any natural or chemical solutions that you used to deal with your own annoying infestations. Most vegetable gardeners are also obsessed with the weather. Beginning well before growing season, you may want to begin to record daily high and low temperatures, noting the last and first frosts for the year. You will want to record amounts of rainfall, maybe even monitoring your own backyard rain gauge or small weather station.
And then of course, the best part of the vegetable garden journal is writing about the harvest. You will want to be sure to include in your journal a record of how long certain varieties of vegetables took from planting to first harvest. How often were you able to harvest and the quantities of produce or yields that you obtained from your plantings. And don’t forget to include, just how fine that fresh ear of corn tasted!
Whatever you do, don’t forget to write down some of the personal side of vegetable gardening. You might want to include certain anecdotes about your gardening experiences in your journal. How about including a story concerning the day that you took a basket of zucchini in to the office to share with co-workers, only to find almost another bushel of zucchini already there. Obviously, everyone had a bumper crop that year! You may wax poetic on the beauty of that perfectly red tomato that you just picked. You could include stories about the first time that your children walked barefoot in a just plowed and muddy garden, or maybe you reminisce about the first time that you did. Whatever you choose, be sure to include some of the feelings that you have about your garden. These are memories that will delight you in years to come and feed your spirit, even as the wonderful garden bounty fed your body.
Another fun thing to include in your vegetable and harvesting journal could be recipes. Why don’t you write down that fabulous pickle recipe that you look all over the house for each year and can’t seem to remember where to find. How about jotting down that great new bruschetta recipe that your friend brought back for you from her vacation in Italy? Providing a single place to keep either your favorite or fresh ideas on ways to store or prepare the bounty of your harvest can be a fun and exciting addition to this wonderful style of journaling.
Historical Comparison Journal
A gardener is most likely a gardener for life. Rarely do experienced gardeners think in terms of one season or one year. They recount many seasons and many years of their gardening. They will often tell stories that reflect over several years, or comment that the rhododendrons this year are more beautiful than have been seen in the last 5 years or that the azaleas bloomed 2 weeks earlier this year than last year. How do they know this? Many of them have an internal eye or memory for this. Some of them make it up. However, some of them are quite factual because they’ve maintained a historical comparison journal.
There are not many of these journals on the market and those that are available are highly sought after. However, it is not too hard to create one of these yourself. What is the basic ingredient? Well, it really amounts to a specially laid out version of a simple calendar. Typically, what you will find is a day by day (if you’re really compulsive), or month by month comparison across some time period with room to record your findings for that day or for that month.
This is typically not a journal where you will elaborate in great detail on the beauty of the garden, how you felt on a particularly warm spring day or even on the details of weather and planting. Typically, what you will keep in this style of journal are quick notes about what’s in bloom, length of bloom times, speed of growth of certain plants, overall appearance of the garden, freeze times, some light comments about the weather and maybe some comparison points to the previous year from your memory or notes. Here, the operative word is comparison. What has happened in my garden since last year, or as it could be compared to previous years.
This type of journal can also be particularly rewarding if it includes some photographs. There is nothing that warms the heart of a gardener more than looking back at the photograph of an immature, “baby” landscape and seeing how it has grown and matured. My own version of this has recorded the birth and growth of my own garden from the winter where, as the “ax murderer” I cleared 60 unwanted pines from my heavily wooded lot, all the way through several seasons of “reforestation” with beautiful hardwoods and ornamental trees and plantings. When I look back, I am encouraged to continue my work and am surprised by the amount of collective energy and vision it has taken over the years to reach the current state of the garden that I love so much.
Be sure to include notes on wildlife sightings. It is a great reference to include notes on when a particular migrating bird species was through your garden year after year. Also, if you are trying to establish a wildlife sanctuary or habitat, you will find it a pleasure toe keep a special note of how that is progressing.
Now, project yourself into the future. You’re retired and gardening has become a little challenging for you. Maybe you’ve even become more of an armchair gardener than an active gardener. Imagine also that you have a stack of these beautiful journals that span 25 years of journaling in your home garden and landscape. Taking each of these down you can revisit the springtime that your youngest son went to college, you can remember the summer that you retired and worked all summer in the garden. You can quickly revisit some of the best years and the beauty that nature gifted you with each year.
Landscape design and planting journal
OK, now let’s say that you’re not necessarily into the philosophical approach to gardening. Let’s even say that you aren’t looking, yet, to compare year over year. Perhaps you’ve built a new house and the lot is cleared like a blank canvas, or you’ve bought a house with some garden renovation in mind. Or, maybe you just woke up one day and the gardening bug had bitten you in a major way. You are going to want to keep a design and planting journal. This little journal can be a really valuable tool to help you improve the beauty and value of your property.
Let’s start with the design. Whether you have hired a landscape architect to draw a fabulous design or whether you have roughly drawn out something on graph paper for a small flower bed that you intend to plant, the first element of this journal will be to capture elements of the design. This starts with a site assessment and layout of your garden area (large or small), any special features about the area and its soil, sun or drainage, as well as an inventory of any existing plants. From there, you will want to include the new design features and plantings that you plan.
From that point, the journal really kicks in. With this journal you can begin to keep a record of all of the plants that you have planted.
You really want to capture information about the plants themselves. You want to know what they are and how you should care for them. This may include information such as:
• the name of the plant (common and/or botanical)
• the plant variety
• required growing conditions
• anticipated size of the plant
• bloom color, frequency and timing
• where you obtained the plant
• information on any plant guarantee that was offered
• cost
Often, capturing this information can be as simple as dropping the little plastic tag from the plant into a Ziploc bag or plastic sleeve. It may be taking a clipping from a magazine or catalogue that beautifully illustrates the specific variety that you’ve planted. You may also choose to manually record all of these details, even cross referencing or supplementing with information from your own reference guides or online searches.
It is particularly rewarding to make special notes about any “pass along” plants that you’ve received from or shared with good friends. My neighbor across the street has a beautiful story for almost all of the plants in her yard: this shrub was a gift from her neighbor; this tree she bought right after she and her husband built their house; that rose was transplanted from her parent’s farm, she had loved it as a young woman.
Of course, most importantly, you want to know what is where. Often, the befuddled and less organized gardener will wonder seriously in the spring where they planted those perennials last year, or look at a shrub and wonder what in the world it is. Even worse, they may accidentally in their zest to pull weeds, inadvertently pull up tender shoots of emerging perennials. Use this journal to record the locations of your plants. This may be noted directly on a diagram or on a composite list.
Garden Organizer
Sometimes keeping a journal is less about how you feel or what went where, and more about those long “to do” lists that gardeners have endlessly running through their brains. Or, it may be a place to maintain and assemble lists of your favorite plants, seed packs and catalogues that seem to litter the entire house. Anyone who gardens knows that gardening can be beautiful and rewarding, but it is also quite a lot of work. Most gardeners can use a little help in getting organized. Having a garden organizer can be a great tool for the inexperienced or experienced gardener, alike.
A good garden organize will suggest and help you organize your seasonal tasks. It may include a reference guide that suggests or helps you to organize the tasks that you should consider each month in your specific region of the country, state or growing zone. This may be something as general as “In zone 8, May is a great time to prune azaleas, immediately after the last bloom and before next year’s blooms have set”. Alternatively, it could be your own list of tasks and something as personal and specific as “Immediately prune and mulch Angel Trumpets after the first frost, don’t forget the one that you planted in the front”.
The garden organizer may also be a great place to capture all those loose bits of information that are flying around the house. This could include plastic folders for plant tags, envelopes for seed packs to be planted, sheet protectors for small working diagrams of various flower beds. It may be a place to organize business cards for the landscape helpers as well as a list names, addresses, websites and numbers for favorite nurseries or specialty growers.
Sometimes the commercial organizers will provide helpful plant lists that can be used as reference. This may include lists of annuals or perennials that bloom well in sun or shade tolerant plants. You may also choose to include in your garden organizer a running and active “wish list” of plants and varieties that you would like to find.
Some of us would really rather not know how much we’ve spent on our gardens. However, many of you will want a special section in your organizer to record expenses, keep receipts and maintain any outstanding proposals for garden work.
Garden organizers tend to be rather bulky. This is true, especially if you are someone who accumulates a lot of information about gardening. So, first warning is don’t purchase a small, bound garden journal if what you really need is an organizer. You will want something that is large, durable and offers expansion capability. Le me repeat durable here. You will really want something that is almost weather proof, or at least smudge proof. The exterior needs to hold up to being handled by you right after coming in from the garden. Also, you will want to be able to extract certain lists or pages to take with you to the nursery. So, when you’re looking for something to use an organizer, think about an accordian file, a loose leaf binder or a small box. Acquire some plastic labels, folders, plastic zippered compartments and durable sheet protectors to help you organize the individual sections and items. This type of journal is really a “hands on” tool.
Conclusion
Now, what if you say, “I want it all! I really want to keep all of those kinds of journals, where do I start?”. Well, congratulations, you must really be taking your gardening seriously or maybe you’re just a little gardening obsessed, like I am. My recommendation would be that you start with a few elements and then expand. You can include the elements that are of most use to you in your gardening journal and then adapt from there.
1) It is easy to get a beautiful personal view style journal and begin recording your feelings about your garden. Those are easily available at most book stores or card shops and many of them have covers suitable to inspire thoughts of your garden.
2) Next I would suggest that you begin to organize some of the garden photos that you may have. If you have those on your PC, decide an approach to organizing them and create separate folders that relate to your gardening photos. You may organize photos of your own garden by year and season, or by area of the garden. You may organize travel photos by location and date or you may make a copy of a specific photo of a beautiful private or public garden and insert it with your own garden photos, as a specific inspiration photo. If you keep your photos in prints, then get a photo album, or albums, to begin to organize your garden photos.
3) Next, I would recommend that you visit your nearest office supply store and assemble a few things that could serve to help you create a useful garden organizer:
• large plastic 3 ring binder (think durable0
• sheet protectors
• plastic zippered pouches with 3 ring binder holes
• plastic photo sleeves suitable for 3 ring binder, to include a few key photos
• plastic sleeves or fold over envelopes to insert in the binder to drop in receipts and newspaper or catalogue clippings
If you are an inexperienced or light gardener, you may find it less expensive and more straightforward to start with a commercially available garden organizer. Those products will probably come with some helpful tips and lists that would be of benefit to you as you learn to garden. These three steps are relatively inexpensive and low risk.
After you’ve started with those three items, you will be in a position to better evaluate the commercially available products. You are certainly free to mix styles or to even keep more than one style of garden journal going at the same time! Don’t for a minute think that you have to limit yourself to only one style.
Also, keep in mind that garden journals make great birthday or holiday gifts. It makes an especially thoughtful housewarming gift, as it is a pleasure to start keeping a record of your garden from the very beginning of a new home. It is also a nice surprise when you sell a home to leave a garden journal for the new homeowners, with the record of the plants and diagrams showing things that they will discover in their new yard as the seasons unfold. Also, if you are a gardener yourself, there is a great likelihood that at least a few of your friends and family are gardeners, too. Ask them how they feel about garden journals, talk with them about your garden journal, try to explore what might be of interest them. Take some good notes and then surprise them with the perfect garden journal!
