Posts Tagged ‘house and garden’
Cindy on July 23rd, 2011
I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I worked in the garden.” — John Erskine
My favorite summer pastime is working outside in my garden — a pastime that inevitably leads me back to the keyboard in my home office. The following gardening essay was published in 2009 in At Home in the Garden, an illustrated anthology of garden writings.
Trowel and Error
After all these years, I still can’t muster the nerve to call myself a real gardener. Real gardeners know that a garden is an ecosystem as well as an art form. Real gardeners spend hours studying seed catalogs, and can identify every plant in the nursery by its botanical name. Always victorious in the battle against slugs, real gardeners stay attuned to nature’s early warning signs and know exactly what to do when leaves turn yellow.
A real gardener I am not — but I’m getting there.
Gardening as a metaphor for living is a cliché as old as the Gardens of Versailles. But I just turned fifty this year, and it occurs to me that plotting my life’s course has been as tricky as maintaining the perennial beds I started a few years ago. My garden has provided clues along the way.
A Midwest native, I’ve always lived in established neighborhoods with mature trees, so I’ve had to seek out plants that will tolerate plenty of shade and depleted soil. Even now, I’m still experimenting, still trying to get it right.
Bob and Jane, my elder neighbors across the street, have watched my green experiments from their porch and offered advice. They often catch me watering a newly transplanted hosta or puttering around the herb beds in my pajamas on sunny mornings. Returning from vacation one summer, they brought me a ceramic garden marker that reads, “Gardens grow by trowel and error,” which pretty much sums it up.
In my early years of home ownership, I followed a much safer path.
Back then, I planted only what a master gardener would call “amateur annuals.” In my own defense, I was trying to raise a child while working at home. I wrote shorter newspaper articles — never had the nerve to start a novel — and barely had time to fuss with a potted geranium, let alone a crop of needy, exotic perennials.
I was also a house-proud perfectionist, always worried that I’d be judged by my foliage and found inferior. Afraid of taking risks, I aimed for an instant gratification garden – a showy but conventional patch that didn’t require much care. But now that I’m more adventurous and, well, less pot-bound, I’m finally reaping the rewards of an unruly perennial garden.
For starters, a struggling peony I planted three years ago produced several crimson flowers for the first time this spring. The blooms are gone, but I’m still gloating.
By nature I’m not a patient person. I hate waiting in line and sometimes I’m too fidgety to meditate. But my stalled peony bush taught me a crucial life lesson: There are times when the best plan of action is to wait and see what happens. Seeds germinate and flower on their own schedule, and natural processes can’t be rushed. (Like that novel I want to start.)
Last year, in fact, I had almost given up on the poor peony and was ready to move it, which would have been a big mistake. Like me, it was just a late bloomer that needed a little more time, and faith, to take root.
For a day or so, I was tempted to cut those gorgeous peony blooms and bring them indoors to enjoy in a crystal vase. But since I’m still a show-off, I left them outside for all the neighbors to admire.
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–Essay and photos by Cindy La Ferle. Please click on each photo for a larger view. “Trowel and Error” is also reprinted in Writing Home, a collection of personal essays on home and family. –
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 August 1st, 2010
Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world a heaven.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Riding my bike on a beautiful day last week, I noticed very few kids playing outside. Made me a little sad. The following piece from my memoir, Writing Home, chronicles a late-summer memory of my son’s childhood. First published in the Christian Science Monitor, it still gives me that “end of the summer” feeling every time I reread it . . .
Summer Home
It began in June with a large cardboard box, just roomy enough to house my wiry eight-year-old son, Nate, and a scrap of old tweed carpeting.
“The fort,” as Nate dubbed it, was expanded throughout the summer to include several new rooms, each designed from salvaged appliance boxes of various shapes and sizes. By the time it was finished, the fort curled like a corrugated snake across the entire lawn. Other kids in our neighborhood added their own flourishes — round windows, paper awnings and banners, plastic pipes and tubes. (Whether these served functional or aesthetic purposes, only the children knew.)
By the end of July, Nate’s cardboard Xanadu had become something of a local landmark. It was such hot property, in fact, that you had to write your name on the official SIGN-UP SHEET to be admitted inside, a bit like the exclusive restaurants lining Main Street downtown. Since we live on a corner lot in a carefully maintained suburb, I worried that our neighbors would object to the ever-growing mountain of boxes in our yard. If you had no imagination and didn’t know you were looking at a playhouse, you might have guessed we were careless about storing our trash.
But no one complained. Other parents who had watched the fort’s progress were amazed to see that something as simple and economical as a stack of empty appliance boxes could keep so many children amused for so long. One afternoon, a local building contractor even stopped his truck to admire the fort’s design.
“Hey there, that’s quite a place!” he called out to Nate and his pals. “Are you renting space in your cardboard condo?” But the kids insisted they weren’t looking for more tenants.
“Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world a heaven,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. We’re born with the desire to create a home, to build our own retreat. And while home can mean something different to everyone, the need for a sense of place is universally human. To a small boy, a discarded carton contains unlimited potential for a playhouse or a fortress of his own.
But to the homeless man who camps near the railroad tracks at the edge of our town, a cardboard box might be his only refuge.
Nate and I first spotted the shelter a few weeks after his fort was built. We were heading toward our favorite fast-food restaurant downtown, taking our time as we walked along a gravel service road flanking the railroad tracks. We noticed a crude assemblage of large boxes almost hidden behind a tangle of wild thistle and Queen Anne’s lace. Torn blankets and soiled clothing were strung on branches nearby; long sheets of blue plastic encircled the base of the boxes like small rivers. We agreed that the makeshift shelter looked remarkably like his cardboard fort back home.
“What’s all the plastic for, and why does the man live there instead of a real house?” he asked as we walked past the encampment. I explained that the homeless man probably used the plastic to keep the boxes dry when it rained. But I didn’t know how to explain the complexities of being homeless to a suburban second-grader who is tucked securely into bed on a full stomach every night.
Following a heat wave later that week, a powerful evening storm rolled in. It brewed so quickly that my husband and I didn’t have time to pull Nate’s fort into the garage. By morning it was scattered across the lawn. Even “the turret,” a sturdy refrigerator carton in its previous life, had toppled like an uprooted tree among the soggy ruins.
At first I was secretly relieved that we could finally dismantle all the boxes that had taken over our yard. But Nate was fighting tears as he tried to salvage parts of his handiwork, and I couldn’t help but feel his loss. Together we folded the sheets of rain-soaked cardboard and piled them near the trash in our garage.
Since then, school has started again. But we haven’t discarded a cardboard box without seriously considering its possibilities. And we often wonder about the homeless man who had set up camp near the railroad tracks. The last time we walked there, we noticed that his shelter, like Nate’s fort, had collapsed in the hard summer rain. – Cindy La Ferle
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 April 19th, 2010
The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.” ~Hanna Rion
Spring reminds us that we humans were not designed to hunker down in front of a computer monitor for days on end. At some point, we must wake up and engage all of our senses. We need to feel the sun on our backs and to inhale the scents of plants and rich earth.
My own garden has always been a place of healing and renewal. I’m deeply nourished by kneeling in the grass, working the soil, and tending new growth. By the the end of April, I can hardly wait to dig in — and my heart pumps peanut butter every time I drive past a local garden center or nursery. It’s all I can do to refrain from planting too early.
I’m really looking forward to expanding the herb garden outside our back door when the real danger of frost is past. In the meantime, I’m soaking up these gorgeous lines of Amy Gerstler’s, below. — CL
In Perpetual Spring
by Amy Gerstler
Gardens are also good places
to sulk. You pass beds of
spiky voodoo lilies
and trip over the roots
of a sweet gum tree,
in search of medieval
plants whose leaves,
when they drop off
turn into birds
if they fall on land,
and colored carp if they
plop into water.
Suddenly the archetypal
human desire for peace
with every other species
wells up in you. The lion
and the lamb cuddling up.
The snake and the snail, kissing.
Even the prick of the thistle,
queen of the weeds, revives
your secret belief
in perpetual spring,
your faith that for every hurt
there is a leaf to cure it.
–Reprinted from Bitter Angel, by Amy Gerstler; New York: North Point Press; 1990.–
– Garden photo by Cindy La Ferle –
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BLOG TOUR ALERT: If you missed a chance to win a free copy of my book, Writing Home, on other tour 
stops, here’s another. Click here to read Angie Muresan’s review and to participate in her giveaway this week. I’ve always enjoyed Angie’s view on life — and I think you will too.
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My favorite summer pastime is working outside in my garden — a pastime that inevitably leads me back to the keyboard in my home office. The following gardening essay was published in 2009 in At Home in the Garden, an illustrated anthology of garden writings. 
Bob and Jane, my elder neighbors across the street, have watched my green experiments from their porch and offered advice. They often catch me watering a newly transplanted hosta or puttering around the herb beds in my pajamas on sunny mornings. Returning from vacation one summer, they brought me a ceramic garden marker that reads, “Gardens grow by trowel and error,” which pretty much sums it up.
For starters, a struggling peony I planted three years ago produced several crimson flowers for the first time this spring. The blooms are gone, but I’m still gloating.
