Once upon a time, my garden was planned and–thanks to a a more orderly person than I am–in relatively straight rows. Now I’m embracing what a book I’m reading calls “free spirited.” After all, I’m focusing on a lot of native and hardy plants and self-seeding perennials.
As my cowboy dad lived in many periods of his life and my brother Chris famously sang in elementary school, “Give me land, lots of land under starry skies above. Don’t fence me in.”
This camas lily in my rain garden might be my favorite of all the things that bloomed this spring.
I loved stumbling onto this quote from Meriwether Lewis’ travel journal in June of 1806: “The quamash is now in blume and from the colour of its bloom at a short distance it resembles lakes of fine clear water, so complete is this deseption that on first sight I could I could have sworn it was water.”
http://www.hugheswatergardens.com/camas%20lilies.html
Wow. Can’t wait until I have a lake of those lilies!
The monkey flowers have been spread from one little spot last year and are adding such a great yellow to my life. All I have to do is keep the soil moist and I guess I’ll have these around until fall.
Something like blue-eyed grass is so delicate and teeny I would never have noticed it until I started working on my backyard certification and learning about native plants. I know that writing depends on what John Gardener calls precision of detail. In The Art of Fiction, he says that for stories to work, readers must come to feel them physically, as if they were injected directly into each scene.
Growing up in Ethiopia slowed me down. With no distracting television or shopping or even changing seasons, it feels like I noticed–and soaked up the sensations–of the world. Even my boarding school, which we say was in the city of Addis Ababa, was pretty slow paced. Notice the grazing cows.
A fast-moving plot is one pleasure of reading. But give me the slow, precise, vivid, unexpected detail…on the page and in the yard for making me feel most alive.
