Brain Pickings: Rachel Carson & Dorothy Freeman

Most of the historic gardens I've studied across Europe for 2+ decades are farms.  Never anticipating I would be designing a single farm garden.  Majority of my work, to date, has been in subdivisions attached to large cities.  Learning at the historic farms, best ever choice.
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Farm, below, quite typical of gardens I've studied.  Great dividing line of farm & formal at the ha-ha.
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Pic, above, here.

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, published when I was a small girl, made the tv news.  That black/white screen bearing witness to MLK's murder, Vietnam, a President shot, the Texas Tower Shooting, and race riots.  Well before the age of 10, all this stuff plastered tv news.  Nope, in the wisdom of a 6'ish year old, Rachel Carson, was just another bitter story.      

 
Pic, above, here.

Time passes.  Of course I learn she's done something quite wonderful.  And I had to study at those historic farms, learning how to insert Nature into subdivison landscapes.  Nature, my great love.

 
Pic, above, here.

Until this year, Rachel Carson remained a 'persona'.


Pic, above, here.
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Following a short rabbit hole of diversion, I discovered Rachel Carson the person, today.  A dear friend, at lunch yesterday, Brio on Peachtree, shared with me something wondrous that had happened to her.  Before the sharing I knew something was different, she was luminous in her beauty, radiating peace.  A terrible bitterness she had carried, over 2 decades, lifted.  Gone.  Whew.  What a lunch we had and I don't mean the food (wedge salad &lobster bisque).  
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I don't see my friend often enough, at least once a year we try to spend the nite, sharing the same bed, not wanting to miss a moment of time with each other, talking till way too late.  This friendship quite important to both of us.  And it has had its moments of angst, nevah you doubt, but never an option to part.
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Brain Pickings had an intriguing link about a friendship, a deep friendship between a pair of grown women.  With memories of yesterday's lunch still glowing today, you know I took the click bait.
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Rachel Carson is one of the women.  This article about deep friendship, turned Rachel Carson the persona, into Rachel-the-person.  A nice read of depth, as only Brain Pickings does, I finished the article with moist eyes.  And, clicked afterward to buy her books.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO T
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If you don't take my click bait, above, here's an excerpt:

"In September of 1963, shortly after her testimony before President John F. Kennedy’s Science Advisory Committee became instrumental in the first regulatory policies on pesticides, Carson wrote a stunning letter to Freeman. It contained a contemplation of her own mortality so profound, so poignant, so tenderhearted and transcendent that it could only be articulated to the person who knew her heart most intimately. She writes:

Dear One,

This is a postscript to our morning at Newagen, something I think I can write better than say. For me it was one of the loveliest of the summer’s hours, and all the details will remain in my memory: that blue September sky, the sounds of the wind in the spruces and surf on the rocks, the gulls busy with their foraging, alighting with deliberate grace, the distant views of Griffiths Head and Todd Point, today so clearly etched, though once half seen in swirling fog. But most of all I shall remember the monarchs, that unhurried westward drift of one small winged form after another, each drawn by some invisible force. We talked a little about their migration, their life history. Did they return? We thought not; for most, at least, this was the closing journey of their lives.

But it occurred to me this afternoon, remembering, that it had been a happy spectacle, that we had felt no sadness when we spoke of the fact that there would be no return. And rightly — for when any living thing has come to the end of its life cycle we accept that end as natural.

For the Monarch, that cycle is measured in a known span of months. For ourselves, the measure is something else, the span of which we cannot know. But the thought is the same: when that intangible cycle has run its course it is a natural and not unhappy thing that a life comes to an end.

That is what those brightly fluttering bits of life taught me this morning. I found a deep happiness in it — so I hope, may you. Thank you for this morning.

Rachel  "