Sister Arts: Gardens, Poems, Art, Community

Gardens of Yorkshire

There's just too much to say about our whirlwind two-day tour of Bronte country and the seacoast town of Whitby.  Improbably brilliant colors under changeable grey skies; every humble dooryard exploding with flowers; wide expanses of wild country in grays, greens and purples.

Walking through the village of Haworth was a lesson in floriculture. 

I actually had to feel the petals sometimes to believe the flowers were real.

These are the front gardens of modest row houses, designed, planted and maintained not by professionals but by ordinary people.

Walking past garden after garden gave me a palpable sense of how deeply this art form is sunk into English culture.  It is an art that many practice with a high degree of skill, and most know at least enough about to enjoy. 
It's hard to come up with a North American equivalent...would it be cooking?  Swimming?  I don't know.

But we could not linger long at dooryards, however beautiful.  Our destination was sublimity.  We wanted to dare the cliche and walk the moors in the footsteps of the Brontes.

And we were not disappointed.  This was another Sam-Baker's-Ordnance-Survey adventure, and we had a glorious time getting lost and then finding ourselves again under skies that alternately smiled and threatened, but were always spectacular.

The landscape contains a wide variety of ground cover and flowers,

always in the same subdued and lovely palette.

Walking back into town after an exhilarating four hours, we visited the Bronte Parsonage Museum and its garden.

At the Parsonage as in the neighboring churchyard where the Brontes are buried, the colors of the flowers against the grey stone walls and endless rows of tombstones seems to add to the melancholy atmosphere rather than cheer things up.

Especially after seeing the dark, expressive portraits and tiny personal effects of the family in the museum, the place felt spooky.  Sublime, rather than beautiful. 

This mood continued when we arrived at Whitby the next morning and jumped off the bus to gales of wind and temperatures worthy of a Texas winter.  A ruined abbey dominates the sea-cliff, surrounded by another enormous graveyard where key scenes in Bram Stoker's Dracula are set.  But facing the ocean is also a cheerful crescent of Georgian townhouses worthy of Bath, fronted by--of course--a lovely garden.

 

Tramping with Sam

I'm really enjoying spending time in Oxford with my "frolleagues," Sam, Phil, and Sabrina (and 15-year-old Eli).  Sam and I both like to hike so Sunday morning we set off early to walk north out of the city of Oxford.  Our destination was John Buchan's gravesite in Elsfield, and then we planned to circle back around to the Victoria Arms, a pub on the Cherwell about a fifteen-minute walk from where we are living in the north Oxford neighborhood of Summertown.

After about thirty minutes on bike paths through the suburbs, we hit wheat fields.

It's been rainy the last few days so the track through the fields was pretty muddy.  At one point I looked at Sam's pants and thought, "Wow, he is muddy up to the knees.  I wonder how he got so much muddier than I did?"  Then I looked at my own pants, and they were worse. 

Sam had an Ordnance Survey map of the region.  Although I've used topo maps hiking in North America, this was my first encounter with the legendary Ordnance, started in the eighteenth century as an Enlightentment project of total knowledge.  The goal:  to map every square inch of the island of Britain.  Often Sam and I would pause to look for the next path and spy a barely-discernible tamping-down of the grass.  Could that be it?  And THERE IT WOULD BE on the Ordnance Survey map.  Not only every cowpath, but every barn, outbuilding, and house was on that map.  My parents' ranch in Alberta is criss-crossed with tracks much more substantial than some of those we followed, but I know they are not on any map.  Sam kept the invaluable document tucked under his arm:

In this way, we proceeded past the estate of Water Eaton,

under occasional showers, against which I had provided myself with what turned out to be an utterly useless poncho,

through the village of Wood Eaton, and to the Church of St. Thomas of Canterbury in Elsfield.

Sam is a fan of John Buchan, the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps.  Sam had heard that he was buried with his chauffeur, but we could find no mention of this.  Looking around at the graves, though, I noticed that next to Buchan's striking circular headstone

was one commemorating Amos Combs with the statement, "for twenty years the friend of Lord Tweedsmuir."  I pointed it out to Sam, and he said, "You found the chauffeur?"  "But what about Lord Tweedsmuir?"  I asked.  "Was it a threesome?"  No, as it turned out Lord Tweedsmuir and John Buchan are one and the same.  Tweedsmuir is a familiar name to me because he was the Governor General of Canada in the early 20th century.  There's a private school in Calgary named after him and that's where all my druggie friends got sent when they got into trouble at the public high school.  So not only was my gaydar affirmed, I also got some unexpected CanCon.

On our way back into Oxford, we met some very handsome locals:

and later saw evidence of the activity of their wives:

Thinking of eggs made us hungry, and by the time we reached our destination, we had been out five hours.  Needless to say, the reward of a Sunday roast at the pub was most welcome.

Thanks to Sam and the Ordnance Survey, it was a wonderful day out.

 

 

My Mother's Garden

My mother, Joyce Moore, is a naturalist and writer who published a book last year called A Guide to Alberta Outdoors: Rides, Hikes, Birds and Beasts.  We visited her and my dad this past weekend to help celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary (and while we were there, Madge and I decided to get legally married too.)  Visiting "my mother's garden" in the wake of finishing Sister Arts  led me to pay some professional attention to her landscape aesthetic.

My mom's degree (from 1960) is in home economics, which at the University of Guelph at that time included design.  Her taste definitely runs to Danish Modern (they still have a classic living room set I love) and her eye in the yard is equally clean, favoring beautiful lines and plenty of open space punctuated with color.

Southern Alberta has had a long, cold, rainy spring, which was miserable for the natives but for July visitors resulted in a spectacular landscape:  green, lush, and blossomy.  My parents' yard in Calgary is in a neighborhood that dates from the 1950s (my dad actually worked construction on the crew that built it when he was in vet school). 

The trees are huge and the plants well established. 

I remember this mountain ash from when it was about six feet tall.  It bears bright-red berries that ferment in the Alberta sun.  They attract cedar waxwings who gobble them up and then fly drunkenly into the living room window.  As kids we used to tape paper cut-outs of hawks to the window to scare the waxwings off and save their little lives.

My favorites are the flowers I remember from childhood:  bleeding hearts,

poppies,

and lilacs, here overgrown among the branches of a fifty-foot spruce tree by the driveway.

This green, deep-bosomed yard was like a cool draught of water.  Now we're back to the Texas heat.

 

Hell Alley and other Mueller gardening challenges

Last weekend I had the pleasure of taking a walk around my neighborhood courtesy of the 2011 Mueller Garden Walking Tour.  Gardeners are working miracles in spaces that range from tiny New Urbanist strips of land to generous common areas.  Here are a few highlights.

My down-the-street neighbors at 2049 Antone have done a community service by planting their street-facing fence with beautiful coral vines. 

Because they have a corner, lot, they have more space inside the yard than many:  a long, narrow area that they have transformed into an inviting living space with several landing areas,
flowerbeds and an herb garden,

and, complementing the professional design, some nice DIY touches:

Next door at 2045 Antone, the much smaller yard features built planters that create an attractive circular form for the yard space:

These neighbors made the most of their small yard by planting a thriving vegetable bed on the back alley:

At 4109 Camacho, neighbor Janelle is a master gardener and leader of the Mueller Landscaping Committee.  It shows!  In addition to spectacular front yard views,

Janelle's husband introduced us to "Hell Alley," the strip of land on the side of their property where summer temperatures get above 100 degrees for many days at a time, and the sunshine never stops baking the plants.  The gardeners helpfully posted a list of plants that were working for this challenging setting, including full-sun favorites like salvia gregii:

A very special feature of this garden is the Peggy Martin climbing rose:

This spectacular bloomer attracts bees and has thrived in my neighbors' garden.  This rose is also notable because it was one of the few plants to survive the flood of a Mississippi plantation during Hurricane Katrina; the plantation owner began propogating it and sells cuttings to raise money for hurricane relief. 

One of my favorite gardens was one of the smallest, neighbor Kim's "art project" as she calls her alley experiments at 4116 Camacho. 

Kim had some real challenges to overcome aside from square footage, such as the unsightly air conditioning units blocking her space, which she masked with beautiful morning glories.

Kim has some great collectible plants like this unusual cactus:

But my favorite original touch had to be the shoe holder Kim converted into a vertical bed for herbs:

Although she admits to having been an art major, Kim is modest about her gardening knowledge, saying she learned everything she knows from her neighbor Andy.  Needless to say, I was curious to see Andy's garden, which is at 4109 Camacho, a corner lot facing into the courtyard of the garden homes between Camacho and Scales. 

That's Andy standing with his arms clasped behind his back on the porch.  What you see above is the part of Andy's yard that faces the garden courtyard, so Andy says that against his lawn-hating instincts, he does need to leave some of the original landscaping in place for the benefit of his neighbors who share the common space.  In his side yard, though, he goes wild, and he enjoyed showing us his wide variety of plants:

From DIY artisan to master gardener, Mueller neighbors are keeping Austin weird by keeping it green.  Kudos to the Landscape Committee for organizing this wonderful tour, and to all the gardeners for providing us with such beauty, pleasure and inspiration.

 

Mueller Prairie Wildflowers

The poet Eileen Myles once told us in a workshop that every poem is a list.  I don't know if every list is a poem, but this list of wildflowers seen in the Mueller prairie greenbelt must come close.  Thanks to neighbors Janelle Dozier and Mary Parker, who compiled this on a one-hour walk.  They note that our prairie greenbelt gets half an inch of irrigation every 30 days during the current drought, so there are more flowers to be seen here than in roadside ditches.  An archive of flowers.

purple prairie clover:

side oats or Grama grass:

Illinois bundleflower:

Englemann's daisy:

Gaillardia or Indian blanket:

bluebonnets:

gumweed:

Maximilian sunflower (multiple flowers per stem):

common sunflower (one flower per stem):

purple prairie verbena:

sow thistle:

Texas thistle:

beggar's tick:

mealy blue sage:

silver-leaf nightshade:

bluets (also known as Quaker ladies!):

horsemint (both this and lemon mint are family mondarda):

lemon mint:

Partridge pea:

scarlet pea:

Texas bindweed:

larkspur (not native--probably from seeds blown from a nearby flowerbed):

primroses: