Posts Tagged ‘gardening’
Cindy on July 11th, 2011
As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.” ~John Lubbock
Despite all the work involved, owning and caring for a second home is a privilege — especially if that home was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. For me, one of the most exciting aspects of our Wright home in St. Joseph is that it’s so unlike our 1926 Craftsman-style Tudor home in Royal Oak. It gives me an opportunity to explore a fresh new era of interior — and exterior — design.
Designed in 1957 and filled with many of its original Wright-designed furnishings, our ranch-style Usonian home evokes both streamlined Scandinavian and Mid-Century modern styles. Whenever I’m sitting in the living room, for instance, I can almost picture the cast of Mad Men kicking back on the sofa with their cocktails. Anyone for a martini?
Likewise, the gardens at both homes are practically polar opposites. (If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve seen plenty of photos of my garden in Royal Oak!)
In this post, I’ve included a couple of new photos from the Wright house. In the detail shot of the planter near the front door (bottom photo), you’ll see a large ceramic sphere that blends with the red brick and concrete used in and around the house. This area gets a lot of sun, so I’ve mingled succulents with the perennial grasses. The sphere was a gift from our longtime family friends, the Hemmings, as a memorial to Doug’s dad, who died last summer. Doug’s dad always enjoyed gardening, and I’m sure he would have appreciated this tribute.
We purchased our most recent piece of garden art (top photo) from the annual Krasl Art Fair on the Bluff in St. Joseph last weekend. It charmed me as soon as I saw it. Constructed from rusted scrap metal and embellished with rocks, this quirky sculpture features a part that moves like a weather vane or a mobile when the breeze blows through.
For now, we’re enjoying the sculpture on the terrace, which overlooks the woods and St. Joseph River (terrace shown in photo above). The piece looks right at home surrounded by the natural, untamed landscape — just the way Wright himself would have liked it. My next challenge is learning which plants the deer won’t eat. Any suggestions? –CL
– Photos of the Charles Schultz exterior by Cindy La Ferle. For a larger view, please click on each photo. –
Cindy on June 3rd, 2011
By isolating himself at Walden Pond, Thoreau hadn’t run away from life. He’d run toward it. Why couldn’t we leave our lives of quiet, digital desperation and do the same?” — Susan Maushart, from The Winter of Our Disconnect
Once in a while, we all need to unplug. Friends who’ve been visiting this site for a while know I spend less time hanging out here in the “Home Office” once summer arrives. Escaping outdoors — sans laptop — restores my spirit and makes me feel whole again. I’m ready to start this week.
As it happens, I’m reading Susan Maushart’s The Winter of Our Disconnect: How Three Totally Wired Teenagers (and A Mother Who Slept with Her iPhone) Pulled the Plug on Their Technology and Lived to Tell the Tale. It’s a compelling (and often hilarious) memoir detailing how Mausart, a journalist, and her kids made the difficult decision to live without technology for (gulp) six months. Using current research to back her premise, the author shows how limiting our use of technology, including social media, can enrich the quality of our lives and deepen what she calls “real-life” relationships. As soon as I’m finished, I plan to review the book in a column.
But I’m not totally unplugging this summer. Unlike Maushart, I don’t have the willpower to go for more than a week without checking Facebook, blogs, and e-mail. Through August, I’ll continue to post links to my newly published material; or I’ll rerun favorite (previously published) essays in keeping with the season.
Meanwhile, I’m still micro-managing my mother’s life, keeping a watchful eye on her dementia and health-care issues. Trying to find my balance in the midst of it all has been the toughest challenge I’ve faced in a long time. Whenever possible, I follow Thoreau’s sage advice to “Simplify, simplify.” Right now, things with Mom are relatively calm — and I am working to keep them that way.
When you get a chance, please fill me in on what you’re up to this summer … Will you be blogging more or less? Spending more time at the beach or in your garden? Planning a graduation party? Spending less time at the office? Please send me a cyber postcard before you unplug. –CL
– Top photo: My Japanese garden, a favorite backyard escape. Bottom photo: A clematis arching over the gate in our backyard. All photos by Cindy La Ferle. –
Cindy on May 5th, 2011
There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling. ~Mirabel Osler
Like most people who love to garden, I’ve been by frustrated by spring’s slow arrival in Michigan. Finally, the sun rose in a cloudless sky this morning, and it was all I could do to keep from running outdoors in my pajamas to start weeding. But the soil’s still muddy, so despite the glorious sunshine, I settled for a little “indoor gardening” today.
As luck would have it, I stumbled on another wonderful vintage bird vase at an antiques emporium in Berkley this afternoon. So, I clipped a few pansies from the pots on our porch, and rounded up a few wildflower blooms from the backyard. Viola — my little bird is perched in his own garden!
I’ve collected several vintage bird vases to decorate the house in the summer months, or to use as small centerpieces for dinner parties. I can usually find them for under $10 at garage sales and flea markets. In the photo taken in my garden room, you’ll see my new treasure along with a painted birdhouse I snapped up for a song today at the same antiques shop. Please click on the photo for a larger view. –CL
Cindy on July 24th, 2010
Whether it’s classical urns or pink plastic flamingos, limestone saints or impish ceramic elves, Ionic Styrofoam pedestals or poured concrete birdbaths, you are the curator of your own backyard exhibition.” — Mary Randolph Carter
I believe a garden should be more than rows of groomed beds and well-tended flowers. Just as the interior of a home reveals the personalities of its residents, a garden can reflect the quirks and passions of the people who tend it.
My favorite gardens tend to be “decorated” in the true sense of the word. For instance, I love the little thrill I get when I explore a friend’s herb garden and discover a stone cherub with a broken wing tucked behind the parsley and basil. Or a rusty flea-market bench perched in a bed of roses.
I’m also a huge fan of weathered gates used to support tomato vines, and one-of-a-kind birdbaths crafted by local artists. In other words, I’m a sucker for garden junk.
Like the things I’ve collected for my home over the years, most of my garden ornaments have sentimental meaning. Some don’t actually qualify as “junk,” as they were given to me as birthday gifts — including the granite Buddha (from my husband) resting in the Zen garden.
Of course, there’s always room for castoffs in my garden. When my friend Shirley moved to an apartment, she unloaded some of her own garden ornaments in my backyard. One of my favorites is the terracotta rabbit head that peeks out from a 
gnarled maple behind the patio.
I miss all my blogging friends this summer, but I hope you’re also outside soaking up some Vitamin D. (Remember, we can sit at our desks all winter and stare at the computer screen while the snow piles up.)
Meanwhile, I’ve been working long hours as an extra in several different film projects since June — quite a diversion from writing, blogging, and 
teaching! When I’m not working or looking in on my mother, I try to spend as much time as I can pulling weeds or admiring the blooms of my early summer handiwork. Here’s to summer! – Cindy La Ferle
– All photos in this post were taken in my garden. Click each one for a larger view.
Cindy on June 9th, 2010
All my hurts my garden spade can heal.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Titled “The Art of Midlife Gardening,” this essay was published in Victoria magazine in the March/April issue this year. With the editor’s permission, I’m sharing the piece with you while I’m off this week…
Last spring, members of our local Master Gardener Society invited me to speak at one of their meetings. I was honored, at first, but as soon as the date of the talk rolled around, I started getting nervous.
And with good reason.
Master Gardeners aren’t just fooling around with bulbs and blossoms. These folks earn a minimum of 40 hours of instruction in horticulture science. Meeting for at least 11 weeks, they take classes in caring for indoor and outdoor plants, establishing lawns, growing vegetables and fruit trees, designing gardens, and more. I bow to their expertise.
Barely getting my hands dirty, I’ve written a few magazine pieces and newspaper columns on my romance with plants and flowers. I’ve shared back-yard memories of sweet peas and apple trees and my grandfather’s ferns. But set me loose with a shovel, and I’m just an eager amateur who’s murdered rose bushes and planted azaleas in the wrong spot.
Regardless, the kindly president of our Master Gardener Society assured me that his group of green thumbs would be open to anything I had to say about writing and gardening. They would humor me — and even offer some tips on deadheading my tulips. Somewhat relieved as I prepared for the talk, it occurred to me that gardens have taught me many valuable lessons. At this stage of my life, especially, gardening is rich with metaphor.
Five years ago, when my husband and I turned 50, our only child left home for college. That same year, we also lost several stately maple trees to disease. The removal of those trees wreaked havoc on our back yard: The lawn was totally destroyed and the surrounding beds were trampled. Not a single root or shoot was left of the delicate woodland shade perennials – trillium, Solomon’s seal, or bleeding heart – that I’d collected over the years.
As every gardener knows, the natural world serves to remind us that change and upheaval are part of the master plan. Likewise, our bulldozed back yard reflected my emotional state as I adjusted to the changes in my menopausal body and my newly emptied nest. For a while there, I felt uprooted in my own household. Yet it also occurred to me that when a new space opens up – by choice or by accident – you have an opportunity to try something else; something you couldn’t do before.
A Japanese garden had been at the top of my wish list for several years, but until all those dead trees were removed, I’d never had the right spot for my dream garden. And so, with the help of a landscaping team, I created a path and some raised beds for my meditation garden, which now includes a small wooden bridge and a dry river of beach stones my husband and I collected from Lake Michigan. The garden has become an outdoor sanctuary, a peaceful escape from my writing deadlines and the clutter inside our home. It’s also living proof to me that middle age can be a signpost to a new life — not just the end of our greener years.
At the end of my talk, I reminded the Master Gardeners that I often struggle with acute writer’s block, or fallow time. I would guess that anyone who’s been doing the same work for so many years does too. Fallow time is the desert where ideas shrivel and evaporate, if they sprout at all. Fallow time is the waiting season, the creative slump, when blue moods hover like pending thunderstorms. During fallow time, we can turn to the garden for another lesson.
Michigan winters are incredibly long and dull. For those of us who battle the blues, it’s easy to believe that spring might forget us on its way north. But just when things can’t get any gloomier, usually in early April, along comes a balmy 60-degree day — a day drenched in the scent of moist earth, tulip bulbs, and new grass waking up. Suddenly, a glimmer of hope breaks through, melting all those months of doubt and dejection. The frozen river thaws. Possibility stirs. And that when I know it’s time to grab my tools, dig in, and begin again. — Cindy La Ferle
–Reprinted with permission from Victoria magazine. All garden photos copyrighted by Cindy La Ferle. Please click on each photo for a larger view. –
Despite all the work involved, owning and caring for a second home is a privilege — especially if that home was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. For me, one of the most exciting aspects of our Wright home in St. Joseph is that it’s so unlike our 1926 Craftsman-style Tudor home in Royal Oak. It gives me an opportunity to explore a fresh new era of interior — and exterior — design.
In this post, I’ve included a couple of new photos from the Wright house. In the detail shot of the planter near the front door (bottom photo), you’ll see a large ceramic sphere that blends with the red brick and concrete used in and around the house. This area gets a lot of sun, so I’ve mingled succulents with the perennial grasses. The sphere was a gift from our longtime family friends, the Hemmings, as a memorial to Doug’s dad, who died last summer. Doug’s dad always enjoyed gardening, and I’m sure he would have appreciated this tribute.
For now, we’re enjoying the sculpture on the terrace, which overlooks the woods and St. Joseph River (terrace shown in photo above). The piece looks right at home surrounded by the natural, untamed landscape — just the way Wright himself would have liked it. My next challenge is learning which plants the deer won’t eat. Any suggestions? –CL
