The Zen of Roadside Foliage: Carlos David

Mundane subtlety hidden amongst the interior, below.

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When so much is a one-trick-pony, hope you take this mundane subtlety into your home, and heart.  This pony never disappoints.

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What's the rabbit hole, below?  THE STORY thread in all the pics?

 

  

Pic, above, here.

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"Your thoughts create your world."  Buddist

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All I see, in every pic, above/below, are the MUNDANE ARRANGEMENTS.

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Why mundane?  Some are taken from invasive plantings, some from shrubs needing pruning, one is more formally 'normal', flowers.  

 

  

Pic, above, here. 

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Myriad layers, dire subtlety, below.  As if the greenery were still in its field, arching slightly in the breeze.

 

Pic, above, here.

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Bought this neo-exact silver pitcher, below, to serve ice water, or hold side of the road clippings.  From a local thrift store in Atlanta.  One side engraved, North Shore Country Club, Glen Head, NY, 1st Flight 1952, Milton H. Raymond. 

 

  

Pic, above, here. 

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Flowers, above, a 'solace of quiet' singing, talking, loving you, until they 'fold their miracle'.  Whether you think so, or not.  

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Never done this throughout your home?  Weekend almost here.

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Gather your 'vases', source the pruners or kitchen scissors, a basket or bucket.

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Remember a few things, things you already know.  Perhaps never put into words to yourself.

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".....and the closed bud shrugs off

 its special mystery

in order to break into blossom

 

as if what exists, exists

so that it can be lost

and become precious."  In Passing, by Lisel Mueller.

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Best Use of Invasive Nandina, below.

  

Pic, above, here. 

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"There's a line in Walt Whitman's poem, 'Song of Myself' (1855) where he parenthetically says that he behaves no prouder than the level that he plants his house by.  His level isn't performing Modesty, pretending like it's not as good as other, more expensive levels.  Nor is it wrapped up in being better or more accurate than others.  It just does its job without getting in its own way.  At its best, modesty works the same way --- letting us do what we do well without all the comparative baggage.  A fitting insight for a poem that starts with Whitman's intention to celebrate himself, but actually winds up celebrating everything and everyone else."  N. Bommairito (sp.?)

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More than modesty, and comparison, is the gift of sacrament, 'the infusion of grace', from Webster's 3rd International Dictionary.

 

Energies of calm, inspiration, love, and St. Julian of Norwich, "All will be well."  

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Clipping your bushes for a vase inside, instead of straight to the compost pile, is a sacrament, and knowing all will be well.  In addition, bringing foliage inside your house is one of life's simple truths.

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If you've never done this, get ready.  You're going to receive much.

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Jikan = 'silence between thoughts'

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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara 

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Carlos David Studio, pics, and interiors and arrangements.

Landscape Ethics: What Are Yours? Where Do You Apply Them?

 With your garden, has a choice been made?  Your approach, is it: physical, joyful, literary, moral, and ethical?  Had you already put all of this to words?  From tricycle days, I knew without words, primal abiding is outside. 

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Landscape ethics, what are yours?  Can you list 3, now, in the order of importance to you?  Are you living your landscape ethics in the fullness of your heart? Which layers elude you?  What can you change to get there?  For you.

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No one gets their beautiful garden without redemption.  In the beginning, you go into your garden to change it.  Visions of a paradise.  With good fortune, a few years pass, many unforeseen changes made, and, finally beauty, paradise formed.  Along the way, you realize, the garden changed you.   

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'Your paradise is a quality of life; but, deeper than that, it's your life.'  P. O'Tuama

  

Pic, above, here. 

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Tell me again, above, how important foundation plantings are.  What is the safety clinging to them?  Will foundation plantings get you paradise? 

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"Paradise", comes into Latin & Greek & English, through an early Iranian language, Avestan, which is the language of the scriptures, of Zoroastrian, and, it means, "an enclosed garden."  P. O'Tuama. 

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Pic, above, here. 

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" This poem isn't sentimental.  This poem is saying, here is what it's like to hold  paradise, when you know you live in a reality that people would want to steal your paradise, steal your life."  P. O'Tuama

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'Steal your life', for too many, is literal, and for too many, metaphor.  

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"...and sometimes a poet, if they want to make a serious point about politics, will enter into that serious point thru a side door, and they might describe something of landscape or something of memory or something of joy, but there's a line in it that strikes home, because that line is telling a deep political truth around which everything else gathers."  P. O'Tuama.

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Pic, above, here.

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At the front end, planning/planting your landscape is thrilling.  You are in charge.  You have the control.

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 "To know what is coming is to perceive control; and the mind is all about control, particularly in the cerebral, capitalist, goal-oriented global north.  We want to control, or, in neuroscientific terms, we want to exercise cognitive control, our mysterious ability to behave in accord with the goals we set.  ....for, ultimately, humans want to control the future, or to believe that they can."  Anna Badkhen

  

Pic, above, here.

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Walls of trees, walls of hedges, stone hallway to the door, above, Tara Turf lawn, art against the wall (properly plinthed), completing the room.  Simplicity.  Yet not.  Pollinator habitat, fruiting orchard, a room with layers of ethics and meaning.  Something else about these types of landscapes, above.  They're the most likely to survive for centuries.  

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Tara Test Questions: What are the layers of ethics?  What are the layers of meaning?  How is this orchard generating maximum production?  At its most basic level, Landscape Ethics spill upward throughout our lives.  We're gifted the joyful beginning, more, grace.

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Pic, above, here.

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Your life, above/below, is the focal point of your Landscape Ethics.  From the fungi in the soil, lizard on the wall, blossoms, bees, birds, your home and how it's situated in your garden, how you see your garden while sitting inside your home.

  

Pic, above, here.

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Did a double take at this garden, above.  Created same Landscape for a client.  She'll be sending me a note after seeing the pic.  Proud to have created a landscape to survive centuries.  Yet, no worries if it's paved over in 20 years for a road.  I've done my duty.  

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"A lot of problems happen because of your internal state.  When you're calm, happy, and fulfilled you don't pick fights, create drama, or keep score."  S. Parrish.

  

Pic, above, here.

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Since those tricycle days, pure joy taking hold of Landscape Ethics.  Didn't know at the outset the Landscape was putting Ethics into me.  Nor how many years the process.  The ride has given a primal challenge, primal effort, primal abiding, and a primal redemption.

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A lot, yes.  Yet not the biggest Landscape Ethics gift discovered.  Do you know?

 

  

Pic, above, here.

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From the start, while I was fiddling with control, my garden had already set its mission.

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Do you know?  Took a few decades for me.

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Love.  In the garden, it is this simple.  Whether you think so or not. 

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Abiding love.  The type of love given to all.  Agape love.     

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This precious child, above, knows.

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"...an older writer friend tells me that the role of a writer in America today is to help the readers be less affraid." A. Badkhen.  In the garden I can better articulate my sorrow or fear,  and it's diminished.

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"The sages interpret the fable thusly: to truly pray we must first achieve a state of exultation, which means that joy, not sorrow, brings man closer to God.  Poets help us make our prayers heard." A. Badkhen.

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In the garden, is your poetry.  Your prayers.  Joy.  Love.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO T

Indigo Girls: You Can't See It, You Can't Hear It, We All Need It

 Garden Design is a series of negotiations.  Amazingly you think you're the negotiator.

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More than the sound of wind thru foliage is a Garden's thrum.

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"It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."  William Carlos Williams.  Best line about Garden Design, and pandemic, yet found.

 

   

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You'll discover the vital work of gardening; its planning, execution, caretaking, become the deepest, richest and strongest layer of life.  In and out of the garden.

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Gardens have always excelled in, "revealing people in all their laughable delusions."  Dan Chaon.  Several years into seriously creating a beautiful garden, and laughably failing, I  made changes to my education, self, and expectations.   

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"The act of translation is its own kind of meta; translation is a complex art......"  Sarah Neilson. Garden Design is the highest form of translation.

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Wisteria curtains, above, wish you could see them from inside.  Better, plant Wisteria 'Amethyst Falls' at your window.  Easier than Wisteria, plant Oakleaf Hydrangea and espalier.  Oh my the winter views outside through Oakleaf Hydrangea curtains.

  

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My subversiveness trinity: gardening, reading a poem, saying a prayer.  What is your subversiveness trinity?  You know, the one from your soul, not your elevator speech.

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Do you think he hears the rope, above, while swinging?  Probably.  In decades, he'll still hear this rope swinging.  Do you hear his rope?  I do.  And I can smell the Tara Turf under his feet as he walks away.

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Garden Design is thousands of years old.  Everyone behind us, is with us, as we are with this child, though he lives decades past us.  How do I know?  I hear it in my Garden, in Nature.  You know this, you hear it too, or you wouldn't have read this far.

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Gardening, "It's not about proving anything.  It's about sharing something." Yo-Yo Ma.

 

Pics, above, Tatler, here. 

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Love the wonk of the gate, above.  My gates all have wonk !

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Walk the path, above.  Do you hear it?  Walk outside, beyond the gate, do you hear your footfall?

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In the garden, alone, a barrier is crossed.  No longer alone, I'm not at all, it's only garden.  Garden & silence bring power.

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Emily Saliers, Indigo Girls, about going to a monastery, "It gave me an appreciation for the power of quiet in spiritual practice, which I think a lot of young folks ---or maybe I'll just speak for myself --- didn't really understand, well, what's the big idea about being a monk and going and being quiet?  What does that do for the world?  And it gave me a very keen understanding of exactly what it does for the world and for spiritual communities."

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"....an evolution of recognizing how sacred what is deemed secular is."  E. Saliers.

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"I didn't have an appreciation for simpler things that were proffered as much as I do now." E. Saliers.  

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Of course Gardens are not silent, yet it's their silence saving your life with Nature's oldest poetry.

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"....theologians --- they thoughtfully organized liturgy.  They put thought into constructing it so people might get the most out of it.   .....thought, and organization and structure....."  E. Saliers  Amusing, she's speaking of religion and its template is Garden Design.  

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It's the Garden's silence, you're wanting, as much as its meadow, flowers, trees, etc. 

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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

You Just Think You Don't Want: Stick Trees, Hedges, Balls

"The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.  Whatever you think you can do, or believe you can do, begin it.  Action has magic, Power and grace."  Goethe
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"...which may possibly be my very favorite story of all time, is early and essential (Grace)Paley.  It is a story of love, and of mistakes and missteps that take years to correct themselves, and the story itself is, like the love affair, ardent, charming, wise, knowing.  The story requires that the reader bear heartbreak, without ever renouncing either love or the world.  I think that is what grace is, and I think that is what Grace means: Bear the world, without giving in, and love the people in it, without hesitation."  Amy Bloom
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This garden, above/below, made me laugh at its rich depth, using centuries old technique, and piling on simplicity.  Pure drama, with balls, sticks, hedges.  Who knew simplicity could do this?
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A Garden Design Trinity: Stick Trees, Hedges, Balls.
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Within the trinity, Stick Trees/Hedges/Balls, the agrarian ode to Providence, pollinators, & self are present.
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"One way to isolate a good design from fashion or fad is to evaluate an object as you would a person.  Is it interesting and exciting?  Is it honest and sincere?  Or is it banal, insipid, cute, stupid, or even silly?  Or just dull and boring, destined to be forgotten?"  Walter Hoving, Chairman Tiffany & Co., 1973
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February 2020 began my personal hunt for 'the' stick tree, need an allee.  Type of tree chosen must be deciduous, easily pollarded, fast growing, affordable at decent size wholesale, thrives in sun, preferably native, available.  Since 2008 wholesale landscape growers have little diversity.
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Phoned my Tree Man, in the business for decades.  Told him constraints, first thing he said, "You need a WEED tree."  Great answer.  Which ones are you thinking?, I asked.  Native Catalpa, he replied.
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Never had a Catalpa.  Interesting.  Something new to get to know, learn, love.  No matter, a different tree may be chosen do to size, cost, availability, and meeting other constraints.
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After talking with him, the first garden I saw online, below.  The pollarded trees?  Catalpa.  Wish photo had been taken later in the season when the Catalpa had grown a bit more, the silhouette, then, perfect.
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Pic, above, here.

"The success of a room depends largely on what it does not contain."  House Beautiful, 1905.
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If your elevation is the same, pic below, no worries your home is a 3 bedroom lapboard on small lot, or a mid-century brick ranch on an acre, this style garden design, meant for all architecture, and price ranges.
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Taller grasses in the distance, pic below, canopy trees beyond, balls and stick trees in low meadow.  Easy to maintain, and, maximum pollinator habitat.
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God's Word is written in the Bible.  In the Garden you "feel that you have overheard it rather than read it."
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Once the Stick Trees, Balls, Hedges are decided, and planted, it's time for your life to take over.  Roux of Design: Stick Trees, Hedges, Balls are your stage.  Your life, becomes the magic, joy, grace of home & garden, flowing into each other.
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Your dog, children, friends, seasons, and etc, are the focal point.
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"John Ruskin, the elegant writer on art & ethics told the teachers of humanity -- "all other efforts in education are futile till you have taught your people to love fields, birds, and flowers."  George West, Hereford Rocks.
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Great table placement, color, shape, pic above.  Depending on life, the table is for lunch, staging a potted plant, a place to bring a letter from the mailbox, a glass of wine before dinner, a place to set basket and clippings when gathering for the house.
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"Mr. Head awakened to discover that the room was full of moonlight.  He sat up and stared at the floor boards -- the color of silver -- and then at the ticking on his pillow; which might have been brocade, and after a second, he saw half of the moon five feet away in his shaving mirror, paused as if it were waiting for his permission to enter.  It rolled forward and cast a dignifying light on everything.  The straight chair against the wall looked still and attentive as if it were awaiting an order and Mr. Head's trousers, hanging to the back of it, had an almost noble air, like the garment some great man had just flung to his servant..."  Flannery O'Connor
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"The above opening to a short story, by Flannery O'Connor is, to readers content with grasping information, straight forward enough.  It introduces a character, Mr. Head, waking up at night and noticing moonlight.  To readers who enjoy the practice of reading, the opening is much, much more.
     Two approaches seem to me the difference between reading as a skill and reading as an art.  The first is quite enough.  From knowing what STOP means through understanding a scholarly essay or a legal brief, the necessary skill varies greatly, can always be refined, and lets us negotiate life with some measure of control.  Reading as art, not ART (Once depressingly called "critical" reading) is another matter.  Like the avid devotion to other arts, it develops over time in any number of ways takes all sorts of routes, and has many origins."  Toni Morrison.
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'The plants in your garden are only half the story.  The rest is what you bring to the party.' , paraphrasing Toni Morrison.
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Live in a subdivision?  Little changes using Stick Trees, Hedges, Balls.  Past the balls, pic above, site an evergreen hedge, 4'-5', street views and neighbor's homes hidden, excepting their roofs.
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Inside your home, is where your Garden Design begins.  You'll live both directions with your garden, and home.
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The harder I garden, literally or metaphorically, the more comfort I receive.
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Low meadow, pic below, and pair of old trees, with woodland in distance.  Age.  Time.  More than content, time of year, time of day, weather, geography, are age and time.
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You may live to a nice 87 years old, the conifer tree, pic below, will live hundreds of years.  Eating, drinking, growing, communicating thru its roots with the same electrical current we have in our bodies, to other trees, and plants, photosynthesizing, taking light from the sun, turning it into food, growing, exhaling oxygen.  More than a bit humbling.
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Wish Walt Whitman could read about the science of trees now.  He knew their lives, without the science, in the 19th century.
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Gardens are sacred mandalas, beauty & impermanence.
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Gate in the hedge, above.  Flow, as needed.
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It is your life, and loves, putting perspective to garden & home.  Suddenly, pic above, precious arrives, and owns the entire home/garden.  As she should.
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"When viewed in deep time, things come alive that seemed inert....  The world becomes eerily various and vibrant again.  Ice breaths.  Rock has tides.  Mountains ebb and flow.  Stone pulses.  We live on a restless Earth."  Underland, Robert Macfarlane.
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The calm you design into your garden.  Is not truly calm.  It's a manner of choosing how you will live.
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At first, my mind knew to take charge in the garden, I did, that's when the garden spoke back and told me what it wanted.  Once that dance finally began, I understood what the garden had been doing all along, feeding my soul.
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From the garden we're taught how to feed our soul.  Meadows parched, then rains, growth, gracious & grateful.  Trees, such courage, yet joy & purpose are their life force.  Nurturing a spiritual life, gardens nurture ours.
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"How do you teach your soul?  How do you put experiences of the sacred in your life?  What are the layers you choose to be wrapped in the sacred?"  Sandy Sasso, Rabbi
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We are descendant & ancestor to the garden.  Have you learned responsibilities of ancestors?  Are you legacy making now, to be an ancestor?  Descendant & ancestor are a loop, nurturing their connection is grace.
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Wine & cell phone on the table, above.  One should not be ubiquitous.  I'm guilty.
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Instead of using several gardens with the simplicity of Stick Trees, Balls, Hedges, I chose one.  Moving this garden thru seasons and their life.  Metaphor for yours.
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This is Lesley Cooke's garden, pics above, on Instagram, here.  When you can, take time to peruse her home/garden in depth.  She's able to travel a bit, entertain a bit, have a family, friends, cook, enjoy her dog, yet no stress over the garden, keeping it fabulous.  Simple has rewards.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Off Topic.  Have been away for a bit.  Had the flu flu, 2 weeks, hi fever, evil cough.  My doctor, Beloved's doctor, hospital nurse, each said, Not Corona, at the front end.  Reading a journalists story last Saturday, testing positive for Corona, symptoms were a blueprint for mine.  What to think?  Been a slow recovery.  Will get tested for antibodies later this year at physical.
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I'm healthy, no underlying health conditions, take no medications.  Biggest concern has been Beloved getting Corona, with his major health issues.  He's fine, still working, Georgia considers landscaping to be Essential Services.  But, there's a strategy if Beloved becomes ill, knowing I cannot visit/stay in hospital with him.  Only mention this, in case it helps someone else.
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If Beloved does get Corona, he will go into hospital with Sharpie Marker written on his upper chest, 4 printed rows, with each major health issue, and the name/number of his primary care doctor, my name/number too.
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Thru the years I've spent many nites in hospitals with Beloved.  Every time things do go wrong.  No one specifically at fault.  Wonderful staff at each layer, the mistakes are of the 'system'.  Hence, the Sharpie Marker.
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Told Beloved my plan.  He hates it.  Told him if he gives me any trouble I'll Sharpie Marker his forehead too.  He knew to choose his battle, done.
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So many friends are prevented from seeing their parent/s in the hospital or skilled nursing.  Cannot imagine this life changing hardship, along with worries about survival.
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More sorrows, stresses, greater than this across continents.  Hoping you find moments of transcendence every day, to take care of yourself, as you steward those around you.
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Oddly, it is my chicken coop, giving transcendence every time I walk in.  Walking out, every time, it's, Oh....back to reality.  My chickens turned 8 years old last week. 
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Thank you to everyone on the front lines of any layer of Corona, reading.  Hope my little stories of gardening, and how to get the garden in your head, into your life, take you away for a few minutes.  Better, help you create your own action plan.

The Minimalist Guide to Transcendence

Floral arranging, what a bore.  Another line of thought, transmogrified.  Humorous, now floral arranging a desire, I have no skill at floral arranging.  Yet thought I did, during the decades it was a 'bore', yet never created floral arrangements.
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Innate arrogance?  Much?
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No budget for 'bought' stems/flowers.  Nor a belief in that trade, too harsh on the environment.  Stems, branches, browse.  My own property, or side of the road in the mowing zones.
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Pic, above, here.
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Floral arrangements, above, below, need no skill to arrange.
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Add clear glass marbles to the base of your pots.  Bags of them.  They're at most dollar stores.  They'll keep your stems/branches where you want them.
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Pic, above, here.
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Use Felco pruners, slight angle when clipping.  Once arranging, cut stem again, pound lightly with backside of pruner, at base of stem at fresh cut.  The stems will take up water more easily.
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Pic, above, here.
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A magnolia is on our property, its branches easy to arrange.
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With heavy arrangements, below, make sure your pots have fat bottoms.  Saw this magnolia arrangement, below, and first glanced down to the bottom of its vase.  It's fine.  Any narrower, and the whole thing would tip over if a cat brushed past.
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Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Roadside browse, above.  Don't know if it is, but this is what my roadside browse arrangements look like.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Another option, above, for large arrangements inside.  The winter begonia or geranium.  Their promise of summer, with touches of winter's etiolation, a solid metaphor.  How are you taking yours, the metaphor?  Me?  I've grown longer to survive, but the season will change again, and I'll change with it.
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How many centuries of painters have captured exquisitely the etiolated potted plant inside at winter?
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Layers of goodness flow from these acts.  Detachment, transcendence, in the doing.  Enjoyment of the deed, for weeks.
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Aesthetics are not separable from truth & goodness, Sir Roger Scruton writes.  There is a beauty bias in Nature, and us.  Doing these arrangements, I am humbled at more than their beauty, their work of Providence.  Interwoven lives. 
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Before me, and after me, the same stems and branches will continue their work, drawing others with their goodness and truth.   Telling their stories.  Humorous, and a relief.
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Pic, above, here.
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From there, it's into the well trod path of a theological terroir.  If you're paying attention.  Once you do, you've joined a tribe, thousands of years old.  Same vein Rick Warren hit, "It's not about you."
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Bee to the flower.
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My urge to make these arrangements, no different.
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A large glass bottle, found at the dump, a couple of twigs cut from the roadside, placed inside, with prominence. Transcendence.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Their Perfect Home Was Missing This Layer

Recently I lectured in North Georgia.  A neighborhood amongst lakes, streams, hardwoods, in the foothills of the Appalachians.  The program chair invited me to stay in her home.  Yes.
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Their home had the good fortune of being custom built, and better fortune, atop a mountain.  Their views surpassing many of the best views I've seen in the South.  At the back of their home, all windows, are views of sky, lakes, rivers, islands in lakes, mountains, more mountains, as far as the eye can see, yet below them, views to hillsides sloping steeply down, expanses of woodland upon soft rises, and hardwoods climbing quickly up steep cliffs across a ravine, betray none of the neighbors homes nested on hillsides.  Their neighborhood property owners association has miraculously kept it as pristine as the Blue Ridge Parkway.
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Their views are greater than 180 degrees, closer to 270 degrees.  No words.  Plenty of awe.
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Pic, above, here.
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Over early morning coffee, overlooking views, then breakfast of yogurt mixed with oatmeal & fresh fruit, overlooking different views, I had to share an observation of her interior.
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All perfection, not a single wrong layer.  Surprise, at what was missing.
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Pic, above,  here.
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Tall branches, in arrangements.  Views of thousands of acres of hardwood trees, yet no vase/s of tall branches.
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Pic, above, here.
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Her mind was quick to bite, I could see it on her face.  Then, "Would you come back again and lecture about floral arranging?"  "No".
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I've already sent her resources for someone to speak about floral arranging.  Their passion for floral arranging matching mine for Garden Design.
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Pic, above, here.
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I have no words for what plants and arrangements from the Garden do for interiors, excepting, grace, a form of thanks to, and from, Providence.  If that makes sense.
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     "Knowledge hinges on an act of correlation & interpretation.  At the top is wisdom, which has a moral component, it is the application of information worth remembering & knowledge that matters to understanding not only how the world works, but also how it should work and that requires a moral framework of what should & shouldn't matter, as well as an ideal of the world at its highest potentiality."  Maria Popova.
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When I mentioned what was missing from her interiors, I knew she 'got it' too, about Maria Popova's words.
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Now I'm wanting to see which vases she chooses, types of branches, and where they are placed.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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 I sent Floral Designer info about, Faith Flowers, Laura Iarocci, they also do international floral design tours.  Laura hired me years ago to design her private garden.  We met thru our Career Coach.  Since meeting, she's begun her thriving floral & events & tours business.  Been a joy bearing witness.