C-O-D-E-R-E-D

Archive for April, 2010

Do you live in a manicured neighborhood or along a rambling country road? Are you blessed with lush and fertile soil, or do you have to haul it in? What are your favorite flowers? Colors? Scents? Everyone would like profuse blossoms, but sometimes beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What is possible for you? How will your garden tell your story?
An old wire chair seat brimming with hanging flowers is part of my friend Jane’s landscape appeal. She has also been known to hang an antique candelabra in a tree for a cozy summer supper.

What stories will your landscape tell? They are not all sweet or pretty, roses and lavender. I planted a hawthorn tree in front of my house to celebrate my new life as a single woman. Not long afterward it died. The Chinese plum tree planted by my ex thrived, of course, even though it was never watered. I like this story that until now only my landscape knew. The landscapes of our lives are full of mysterious paradox, perplexing puzzles, and peculiar people. They remind us not to take ourselves too seriously. They teach us to pause just to wonder. The landscape is what it is. Our story evolves from moving through it.
“Gardens slow things down,” writes Dominique Browning. She knows they help us tell our stories. “I want simply to teach my children to see the roses,” she adds. “One day they will know enough to stop and smell them, too.”

Our friend Richard built an alpine creek bed through and around a mound of soil planted with young aspens, then sent water tumbling down the river rocks with an underground pump. The scenic area,
a mosaic of sun-dappled foliage, attracts birds and, unfortunately, also many flower-hungry deer.