Summer Rambling

As we move into official summertime, and pray for rain....I watch the garden go dry. A newer area around the studio is created to be a "water-wise" garden and it is surprisingly lush with foxglove, lilies, grasses, a ground cover of thyme. At this point in the garden's development I only edit. There is copious re-seeding and propagation going on, and so I merely remove what is not wanted. This is the sign of a mature garden. We moved here eleven years ago to a garden looking much like a parking strip at the bank or at a community college...practical, boring, not yet grown, and certainly not reflecting any individuality. Individuality...is. so. messy.

I read somewhere that no garden really outlives the main gardener and that must be true. You can go all over and visit the famed gardens of long dead celebrity growers and see some of the ideas...but that signature must leave with the author.
There is surprise in the reflection I see of us in our garden. Alan made structure, I chose plants to support his theories of borrowed view, perspective created by tricks to provide vista in a relatively small suburban space. So here we are, the structure person, and the detail person. He leads, I respond, he leads again and appreciates.

In our dance too, and our home, and in the structure of our relationship...He makes the big decisions and I endeavor to make them work. Trust is the main ingredient. Plant the seeds, pull out what isn't working, keep what works and what makes sense and what provides a sense of space and color and spice, and agree to agree. Or not.

So I look forward to designing the little town house for us, designed just so that we would love it, (even though we may defer a decision about whether or not to live in it) and two others for some brave people who like to live outside the box and in it too.
And also, truth be told, I look forward to starting another garden....a teeny tiny one.

Above: Orange Flowers, large screen-print in thirty colors...including a variety of blacks.