For my Easter Message, I have selected a passage from an article read several weeks ago.It is by Wade Graham, an author in environmental science, policy and politics. I am selecting this passage because it is appropriate for Eastertime in terms of content, and because it Graham achieves in it a level of eloquence I don't often find.
In The Independent, Graham is writing of the Gardens of Santa Barbara and The Search for an American Eden: Love, Sex, and Garden Magic.
He concludes by describing the penultimate garden, Lotusland. The designer of Lotusland, he says uniquely did not "fetishize the views of distant peaks", but instead "looked down or in, not up, as she carefully framed not mountains but intricate, surreal compositions of light and color and textures of plants and stones". And that,Walking through Lotusland is remarkably like walking through the insides of someone’s head, each garden room a fantasy or a dream, a mental space ....Happy Easter, friends, bloggers, and aspirant writers!
The sum is beyond category, in the sense that it transcends canons of style or period and rejects anxieties of influence, borrows from many sources, and recombines them into something utterly new, because each moment is utterly passionate and personal. The result is garden magic; it suffuses the place. Here, in a garden made by a Polish immigrant in a long-running opera of self-creation, is a fully formed, completely American style: free, individuated, and intelligent, relentless in its gathering of bits of everything in the world, botanical and cultural, immersed in history but ultimately free of it, garden magic untethered.
Whew! An excellent pick for Easter, Emily!
ReplyDeleteCould have been said about penultimate blogging as well as exquisite gardening.
Is blogging, gardening? Hmmm....
Sounds like a place I would love to see. We have something along those lines very close to my hometown called Brookgreen Gardens.
ReplyDeleteFrom Wikipedia: Brookgreen Gardens is a sculpture garden and wildlife preserve just south of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina.
Originally, what is now Brookgreen Gardens was six separate rice plantations. The actual gardens was Brookgreen Plantation. To the south of Brookgreen Plantation lay the Alston's plantation. Its tie to fame is that the owner's wife was the daughter of the infamous Vice President Aaron Burr, Theodosia Burr Alston. On a trip to see her father as governor of New York, her ship was lost at sea. Her ghost is reported to still wander the grounds of the plantation searching endlessly for her father. Also to the south, lay to Oak's plantation. To the north, lay the Laurel's plantation. During the Civil War, Confederate troops dug an earthen fort to prevent Union Troops from entering the system of creeks and canals vital to survival of the rice plantations.
Brookfield Gardens was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.[1] The sculpture garden portion, 551 acres (2.23 km2), of Brookgreen Gardens was included in the designation of Atalaya and Brookgreen Gardens as a National Historic Landmark in 1984.[2][3] Atalaya Castle is just across U.S. 17 which cut through the former combined Huntington property.
About 550 works of American figurative sculpture are displayed at the Archer and Anna Hyatt Huntington Sculpture Garden. Many of the works are creations of sculptress Anna, but other artists are also featured. There are boat tours to Sandy Island and a self-guided tour nature trail to show off the 2000 identified species of life, including majestic longleaf pines, Spanish moss draped live oaks, and vistas of the river and nearby marshland.http://www.brookgreen.org/
Sounds awesome, Beach!
ReplyDeleteBeautiful to both...
ReplyDeleteExcellent.
ReplyDeleteThank you.
I hope you all had a happy holiday. I miss you all, and now my computer broke. What's an addicted blogger to do?
ReplyDeleteThank you so much, Emily. That post took my breath away.