Bookish Gardener

Stop, look and listen.

This "cyber exhibition" of self-portraits by "New Realist" painters is something to see, and its accompanying music by René Gruss is something to hear. Thanks to Reflections in d minor (with very interesting thoughts on what makes "classical") for the link.

Tulips

These tulips were interplanted among the agastache last fall. Some of these are on the wane, but for the most part they've held up remarkably well against many days of high winds. These were from an end-of-season bulb sale, and I had only a rough guess as to what the colors would look like, truly, and how they would fit together. I'll confess a moment of "oh, no!" when the dark tulip (the "claret-colored" unknown identified in "First Bloom Today" in the sidebar—turns out to be 'Negrita') was joined by the adjacent pink-orange tulip (the "salmon-peach" unknown—turns out to be 'Pink Impressions')...I did not think the combination would work (cacophony! I thought), and started fretting about whether to move Pink Impressions to a more harmonious spot, perhaps next to Rosanna in the lavender bed. But as the colors deepened and the rest of the tulips emerged (the "persimmon" unknown is 'Gordon Cooper'; the "ruby-colored peony-flowered" is still unidentified, alas [updated: found my cheat sheet—it's 'Black Hero']), they've come together in a way that I never would have been able to plan. I like it very much.

D__n straight.

Opinion issued today from the Office of the Attorney General, State of California: "Cottontail and brush rabbits that are eating landscaping, ornamental plants, or gardens may be trapped or killed if it can be established that they are materially harming such plants."

Mad about the town; spring Greene

Last Friday, I had the chance to jump-start a recent resolution: to get off my assiduously pursue more of the many, many opportunities here in Madison to enjoy arts of all sorts. Although the UW campus isn't at all far from where I live and do business, I rarely find myself on campus on weekdays. But this past Friday, there I was, doing a guest-speaker stint in a law school class on legal ethics (and yes, Virginia, there are courses on legal ethics in law school), and I realized that I could just walk over to the student union box office to pick up a ticket to see Murray Perahia that same night. I did not know what the program would be until arriving for the performance, and I let out a little whoop (inaudible, I hope) when I saw that it included a Beethoven sonata, one of the late ones (no. 28). This sonata is a favorite: it's accessible, and complex, and has a symmetry that satisfies...technically speaking, it's just plain wonderful. As was the performance.

Meanwhile, I've just heard that the Madison Opera will be putting on The End of the Affair (in a production substantially revised from its Houston debut, they say) next spring. I have to say that I don't appreciate opera viscerally (which I think you sorta have to do to really get it)...too much left-brain interference, probably...but I'm excited to see what will be done with my favorite Graham Greene novel, which surely has such operatic potential, no? And yes, there's a lot of Greene in the air these days (links, links, links at Maud Newton, courtesy of Golden Rule Jones, with yet more links); oh boy, just the thing to stir up my Graham Greene jag from my twenties...so many obsessions, so little time.

But wait a minute...speaking of operatic potential, why hasn't The Good Soldier received the treatment yet? I can almost hear the arias now:

John Dowell: This is the saddest story I have ever heard.
Florence: And so the whole round table is begun.
Leonora: Don't you know...don't you know that I'm an Irish Catholic?
Bagshawe: By Jove! Florry Hurlbird. Do you know who that is?
John Dowell: Now I can marry the girl.
Leonora / Nancy: You must stay here...to save Edward...He's dying for love of you. / I know it...and I am dying for love of him.
Edward Ashburnham: So long, old man, I must have a bit of a rest, you know.

(But here's the thing: even though the libretto would pretty much write itself, should it be a tragic or a comic opera? Even after many years and many readings, I am still not so sure.)

Bergenia 'Beethoven' is here!

Life's little convergences: I was fumbling through Beethoven's piano sonata no. 22 today with my little hands of concrete, when the doorbell rang. It was UPS, with a very special delivery indeed...Bergenia hybrid 'Beethoven', mentioned here with much longing (—and cue the Twilight Zone theme music here, 'cause that particular post also mentions that particular sonata). They cost a pretty penny, but the plants that arrived look really good. So, to answer the musical question, What can Brown do for you?: If today is any indication, it can take you to another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind...

Lucky thirteen

If Morticia is my role model as a wife and mother, then my husband, while perhaps not as exuberantly uxorious as Gomez, is no slouch either: trawling eBay for Hortus Third for Valentine's Day; building new cedar raised beds, in which new lettuce seedlings are emerging this week; and agreeing to cede unto me vast expanses of lawn for new garden borders this season. And today, our thirteenth wedding anniversary, my bemusedly indulgent sweetie is taking the day off and is insisting—insisting!—that we spend the morning at Olbrich Gardens. So that's what we'll do, but not before I reset the jukebox-in-my-mind to play, dedicated for the day: "If I Were a Bell" by Josie deGuzman (from the "Guys and Dolls (1992 Broadway Revival Cast)" CD); "Love Walked In" by Ella Fitzgerald (from the "Ella Fitzgerald Sings The George And Ira Gershwin Song Book" album set); and "Easy Living" by Laurel Massé (from the album of the same name). Happy anniversary, sweetie.

Clove and Carnation

What luck: I scored the last two quart pots of cheddar pinks at the big-box home improvement store this past weekend. More specifically, these are Dianthus gratianopolitanus 'Firewitch'. Like all pinks, the petals are serrated, as if cut by, uh, pinking shears. This dianthus is single-flowered in form, and has a vivid (but not harsh) color that's sometimes described as "magenta" (although it's not in-your-face) and sometimes described as "pink" (although it's not wimpy). It has soft, elegant needles for foliage, in a color that's blue-green, dusted with silver, which sets off the blooms to perfection.

Once I looked up the botanical name, I remembered that this was the flower Elisabeth Sheldon talked about wanting to fall face-down into with her last breath (see this prior post). I thought that was a nifty idea then, but now I realize that I didn't really, fully get it. The whole point, you see, is the scent of the flower, which you can't appreciate without plunging your face into the blooms, which are often described as "clove-scented". (But no, not quite like the cigarette favored by the Spartacist Youth Leaguer who thinks that showering regularly is too boo-zwah.) The fragrance is delicate and lovely, but so subtle that if you return to the flower too quickly, to partake of more, you lose it all, and smell nothing.

Pinks are (glossing over nuances that aren't really relevant here) carnations, and I always think of this poem when I think of the carnation: "Supernatural Love" by Gjertrud Schnackenberg. (This links to the poem via Amazon.com's "search inside the book" feature, which requires registration if you're not already a customer; here's another link to a copy of the poem which contains some typos that I hope aren't too distracting.) I read this poem when it was first published in the Atlantic Monthly, and I only remember falling instantly in love with it, and then needing to go take a long walk around the block immediately after reading it. I tore the page with the poem out of the magazine and kept it until The Lamplit Answer (Schnackenberg's first collection containing the poem) was published, returning to it many, many times over the years. Even now, more than twenty years later, the effect of the poem hasn't diminished. Carnation/carnatio/clou/clove/love: you think, at first, what a clever puzzle, just before it hits you, right in the gut. I'll think of this poem whenever I look at my new dianthus (Greek for flower of the gods), and I'll think, Good Lord, what a beautiful plant.


Postscript: While paging through The Lamplit Answer, I came across Schnackenberg's poem on Darwin, "Darwin in 1881". It's stunning, and I've updated my prior post on Darwin to include a bit of it, here.


The Lamplit Answer. Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982. ASIN 0374519781.

Loves, shoots and leaves

The shoots of Humulus lupulus (golden hops) 'Bianca' are snaking their way out of the ground like green fingers. This is a young plant, but it's already very vigorous, so once the shoots get to be about a foot tall, I'll be pruning most of these bad boys down to the ground. But they're beautiful right now, in a strangely delicate and sinister way. The leaf is tiny at this point, and looks like a miniature Japanese maple leaf. The leaf's color is a fresh yellow-green, intricately veined with a dusky maroon (which is also the color of the stems); the color in the veins will disappear as the leaf matures. If you look closely behind these shoots, you'll see some smaller shoots that are all maroon: Clematis texensis 'Duchess of Albany'. Its "feet" will be shaded by the hops vines, but its "head" will grow up and through the vines, and should come into flower a bit before (and through) the time the hops fruits emerge in late summer.

Required reading

the way she hipped the door aside, the whack
of trowel on the earth. Here peonies. Clipped pink,

From the poem "She Says Come Here Near the Window Diaphanous" from Awake at Dawn. After you read the whole thing, you'll want to scroll on and on through the amazing work on this site.

Flora in the City

Jane Freilicher's paintings of flowers and cityscapes in the gallery show "Jane Freilicher: Recent Work" at Tibor de Nagy Gallery in NYC are getting great buzz, including this review in the New York Observer by Hilton Kramer (link courtesy of About Last Night, where this show is currently one of Teachout's Top Five):

In some of the paintings—Nasturtiums Before a Red Cloth, for example, and Nasturtiums and Petunias I—the spirited patterns traced by the blossoms, leaves and stems of the flowers do seem to be performing a kind of dance on the canvas, in which every element is not so much composed as choreographed. In other paintings, however—Light Blue Above and Flowers on a Wicker Tray—the flowers in their vases seem to be sitting for their portraits. Under the magic of Ms. Freilicher’s fluent brush, they acquire a 'personality' that places them beyond the category of still-life.

The gallery's site includes thumbnails of some of the pieces, among them this one, "Mallows and Trumpetvine", which has sent me into a lather of covetousness just a tad inappropriate for heading into the Triduum. Wish I were there, but since I can't be, maybe I'll settle for a copy of the show's catalog, which includes this delicious quote (via Hilton Kramer's review): "Notice how the city pulls apart to give these stalks and stems room to perform their Matissean shimmy."