{"id":741,"date":"2013-02-04T05:14:28","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T13:14:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/?p=741"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:06","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:06","slug":"cleaning-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/cleaning-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jane Austen introduced Pride and Prejudice<\/em> with the line, \u201cIt is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.\u201d\u00a0 If Miss Austen wrote about gardening, she would certainly have said, \u201cIt is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a good garden must be at loose ends in February.\u201d\u00a0 I am that person and to tie up my loose ends, inspire myself for the new gardening season and transform my home office into something that does not resemble a half-finished archeological dig, I am reorganizing.<\/p>\n

When I first started serious gardening on my own property\u2014as opposed to my parents\u2019 places\u2014I made loose-leaf garden notebooks full of clippings from everything I read.\u00a0 Those notebooks have languished now for years on the shelf atop the radiator in my office.\u00a0 They are dusted often and accessed infrequently.\u00a0 I thought that by going through them I might remember my younger gardening self and find some new ideas.<\/p>\n

Time and the Internet have changed my habits. I clip much less these days because gardening information has become so easily accessible.\u00a0 The first thing I notice in going through the notebooks is that garden writing tends to be shorter now, with fewer rhetorical flourishes.\u00a0 Individual gardeners may still rhapsodize about clematis, but they have to condense the rhapsodies into a few notes in order to accommodate pictures, how-to information and the shortened attention spans of modern readers.<\/p>\n

Like Ebenezer Scrooge, I have a chance to see the past.\u00a0 Twelve years ago, for example, I was very interested in knot gardens and drying flowers, not to mention creating planting schemes for narrow places.\u00a0 I still dream of making a knot garden in the upper back portion of my yard.\u00a0 The narrow space I had in mind when I clipped the article is the area behind my garage, and it languishes still, having recently emerged from under the mountain of downed limbs left behind by Hurricane Sandy.\u00a0 Now is a great time to finally do something with that area.\u00a0 It is perfect for container subjects like begonias and unusual hostas, not to mention heucheras.\u00a0 Nobody sees the space but me, so it has great potential as a secret garden.<\/p>\n

As for drying flowers, I am not sure that I will be able to accomplish that anytime soon, but you never know.\u00a0 It depends how long winter lasts.<\/p>\n

The clippings remind me that I have coveted tree peonies since I first saw one many years ago. Now I have several, including the yellow \u00a0\u201cBarzella\u201d hybrid Itoh peony that was the object of my heart\u2019s desire for years.\u00a0 Not all my loves are unrequited.<\/p>\n

My notebooks are full of articles about botanical illustration.\u00a0 Not only do I love the beautiful images, but as a frustrated artist, I long to create some of my own.\u00a0 Great garden photography is inspiring in its own right, but I find the best botanical illustrations have a singular lyricism.\u00a0 I took a course in botanical illustration long ago and it taught me a new way of seeing plants; something that has stayed with me and influenced everything I do in gardens.\u00a0 Now, if I could only get back to watercolors and colored pencils.\u00a0 I think I would rather do that than dry flowers, though in the best of all possible worlds I would win the lottery and have time for both.<\/p>\n

Even before the current vogue for flowering shrubs, my notebook was full of articles about them.\u00a0 Now I have lots of them and wish I had room for even more.\u00a0 Several years ago I acquired a Japanese kerria, which failed to flourish last year from reasons unknown at the time.\u00a0 My notebook has an article with a starred paragraph about kerria.\u00a0 It reminds me that mine has more shade now than when it was planted.\u00a0 I should move it to save it.<\/p>\n

The collected clippings sit alongside some of my first garden reference books\u2014faithful friends like the old Readers\u2019 Digest Guide to Gardening, <\/em>several specialized Taylor\u2019s guides and one of my favorites, Bill Neal\u2019s classic Gardener\u2019s Latin<\/em>.\u00a0 Neal was a chef, restaurateur and author who was also a gardener and student of Latin\u2014botanical and otherwise.\u00a0 I often turn to Gardener\u2019s Latin <\/em>for actual and metaphysical meaning.<\/p>\n

The reference books and loose leaf notebooks share space with countless other notebooks in which I have jotted down garden and garden writing ideas.\u00a0 Some have been realized.\u00a0 Many more of them wait for me to take a second look.\u00a0 Now, before the earth warms up, I will make a point of it.<\/p>\n

E.M. Forster said– \u201cOnly connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its highest. Live in fragments no longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Returning to my notebooks of clippings, my old reference books and journals, helps me re-establish my personal connection to gardening prose and gardening passion.\u00a0 Perhaps it will also make my gardening efforts less fragmentary.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jane Austen introduced Pride and Prejudice with the line, \u201cIt is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.\u201d\u00a0 If Miss Austen wrote about gardening, she would certainly have said, \u201cIt is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,5],"tags":[515,514,513],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-winter","tag-garden-diaries","tag-garden-notebooks","tag-winter-garden-chores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":742,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions\/742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}