A GARDEN VIEW: WITH ELIZABETH LAWRENCE

Laying in grandfather's old bed in my mother's house last week in Texas along Galveston Bay the oleander, 40 years later, survives. Waving light & shadow onto walls and me. I watch a lizard stalk prey, wind & foliage dance while birds land, mouth's open, taking shade from 100f temps. Realizing the oleander is a landscape design feature Elizabeth Lawrence wrote about, below, in A Southern Garden. Aware, for the first time, the oleander was a feature of my childhood. Something I enjoyed.

As a child I had no one to speak of these things to. Knowing conversation about blossoms, hummingbirds, lizards, dancing light & shadow and the neighbor's cat sitting outside on the windowsill watching with me would be laughed at.

Realizing a window filled with a plant is a landscape design tool.

.

Above, my copy of A Southern Garden by Elizabeth Lawrence. Watercolor by Shirley Felts, Garden Studio.

.

The book a gift circa 1992 from Jenny my mother-in-law the year she was diagnosed with breast cancer, dead in 1995. It's sitting on my desk, made from the door between breakfast room & dining room in her mother's house. A house I lived in after Miss Louise died. The house & garden that woke me up.

.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara