Friday, September 30, 2016

Simple is the Most Complicated

Centuries of story, below, in this French home/garden, wars, plagues, art, architecture, transportation, taxes, riches, poverty, gain, desire, love, grief, loss.  What remains?  Formality with agrarian.  The former, easily located, can you outline the agrarian parameters, and label them, below?
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Two things, below, never mentioned in my measly USA horticulture degree.  If you're a Garden Whisperer, they don't whisper, below, they shout, in tears of joy or Wendell Berry poetry.
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First, below, is the magic of Tara Turf.  Meadow with a mix of what the wind blows, choices that are planted, herbs, bulbs, etc.  Mowed at 1-4 heights creating formality, paths, guilds.  Just meadow, it has no name.  It's literally biblical.  Earth as Provider.  Pastures & meadows, hallowed ground for pollinators, increasing crop yields by 80% with zero extra effort.  Tara Turf is unique to each site.  There should be myriad Tara Turf's for sale.  Tara Turf Gulf Coast, Tara Turf Mid-Tennessee, Tara Turf North Georgia you get the idea.
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Back to the agrarian parameters, below.  They are, expanse of meadow, feeding both pollinators & livestock.  Tallish meadow lapping the tightly controlled pruning of the topiaries?  Pure metaphor.  I adore this phase of maintaining a historic garden, rich in stories.  Tallish meadow lapping the topiaries cannot stay as a permanent feature, it would defoliate the base of the topiaries.
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Second, the Poverty Cycle.  The landscape below is not a conceit designed in, it's organically evolved.  A thread the worlds best historic gardens each has, eras of deep poverty, due to wars or disease.  Touring those gardens I learned to design using elements of the Poverty Cycle.  With zero Poverty Cycle, below, the garden would be entire shrub beds in various forms/shapes with intricate pruning, paths, bulbs, annuals, a morass of boredom, expensively maintained.


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Pic, above, here.
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Before studying historic gardens across Europe, I thought the gardens, above, seen on TV or in books were a bore-bore-bore.  Amusing to look back at that 'me'.  Those days were the 80's and I certainly had every perennial and gee-gaw.  As Zorba the Greek so well said, The full catastrophe.
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Where are you on the pendulum of the garden, above?  What do you see?  Do you like it?  Does the house intrigue you more than the grounds?  What is the metaphor of this garden, above, to you?  Why is this agrarian landscape better than HOA rules/restrictions subdivision?  Oops, a little book club question section.
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Best part, and proof for this garden, above?  Looks good, above, and would look good at a 1959 3b/1b ranchburger.

Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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A few more from Zorba:

  • As I watched the seagulls, I thought: "That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust."

  • Tell me what you do with the food you eat, and I'll tell you what you are. Some turn their food into fat and manure, some into work and good humor, and others, I'm told, intoGod.

  • Is it possible to talk by dancing? And yet I dare swear that's how the gods and devils must talk to one another.

  • How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else. And all that is required to feelthat here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.

  • You must sometimes rejoice that the dark forces of destruction are so numerous and invincible: for thus your aim to live almost without hope becomes more heroic and yoursoul acquires a more tragic greatness.

  • In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.

  • Action, dear inactive master, action: there is no other salvation
    

1 comment:

martamag said...

I like „Simple is the Most Complicted”, it is so true!