...poisonous plants and future plans...

"And some can pot begonias

and some can bud a rose,
And some are hardly fit to trust

with anything that grows...
~Rudyard Kipling

Even when the semester has ended and my workplace is mostly a ghost town where I am cleaning up odds and ends preparing for the end of being the department chair (gweee!) and prepping for my return to researching and teaching, life has been extremely stressful.  

I think my mood would lift if we would just have two consecutive days of sunshine; shoot, even one full day of sun would be nice. The rainy weeks have been so dreary. It seems odd to note that this evening I cannot go out for a walk due to a bear sighting. I have mentioned that I live in a town and not the woods, right? 

Heart Attacks and Old English with a skeleton friend

I was able to snap a few pictures this afternoon. Everything is soggy and needs to be weeded; the grass needs to be cut. The patio cushions need to dry out so that I can sit and soak up some vitamins. 

Earlier today, I bought a delphinium because 1.) I’m clearly just going to keep packing the flowers in until they take over and no one can find me in the yard; 2.) it is one of the prettiest damn flowers you’ll ever see; and 3.) I haven’t started a 10-step program for my garden addiction so even if I was only in the garden center for gloves, it was there.

Foxgloves have risen!

Delphiniums are fairytale flowers so it isn’t a real surprise when one finds them on the cover of Hallmark cards and tucked inside the pages of children’s picture books; however, while they are often shared for their beauty, they have caused a number of fatal poisonings. Delphiniums also do not have a very long life expectancy. I think there is a beautiful metaphor in there. And, of course, you really cannot trust these little guys; my foxgloves are supposed to be biennials but one just popped up this week. Oh you magical wondrous things! Don’t you know that you’re not supposed to exist anymore? That’s part of the beauty; they have no idea.

Today's peony bloom

I just realized that it probably is not the best idea to open a post about life struggles and dreariness, and then head into a discussion about poisonous plants. This is not *that* kind of blog but let me see if my mad-analysis skills can push through.

Beauty is sometimes short-lived. There are moments when everything looks perfect and lovely but sometimes these moments carry a poison. These times might be the dark days of delphiniums. Can we love a poisonous plant? Well, sure. Just don't try to eat it. I guess there is a metaphor there as well.

I’ll leave you with a planner. I’m looking forward to the future months. This afternoon before picking up a poisonous predator, I found the perfect planner by Day Designer called "Navy Floral" but I assure you it looks black up against all of my blacks and my blues. I love the month at a glance, a weekly view, and the monthly to-do lists. 

Here's to new growth, future plans, sunshine, and no one getting poisoned! 

...the story of the black house...

 “I wrote about real people and real circumstances and real neighborhoods. There was no crypt or castles or H.P. Lovecraft-type environments. They were just about normal people who had something bizarre happening

to them in the neighborhood.”

~Richard Matheson 

I attended the university where I am now employed as a faculty member. It was a Master of Arts program. This was back in 1998. I remember the time I first entered 1212 6^th Street. It was a bet with my friend and our boyfriends that there is more inside beauty in the world than exterior beauty. We meant people but it applied to this home as well. 

The house was somewhat renovated with decent carpeting and exposed brick. It was large and cheap even back then. I remember that my rent was $850. Back then, we called it the “peach crack house” because that is a bit what it looked like—a rundown house that had once been painted a peachy color. I searched for an old picture thinking that I had scanned it but I am not at home so you’ll have to imagine for now a sad old house. A few years back, the house was painted this grey color. I’m guessing that the roof still leaks but hey, it looks so much better. It’s one of those comforting sights from the shuttle bus. I see the place I once lived; I remember the guy I dated at that time. We were dysfunctional and awesome and various ways. I remember mostly that we had fun together. I remember the friends who ended up moving in with me. For a while, the third bedroom seemed to be on rotation. Every one of our cars was broken into. There was even an attempted break in of the house but the young teens, whom I ended up confronting because I worried they would break my door, had no idea I lived with a 110 lb. Doberman named Aslan. Unlike his namesake, he only appeared tough when he was protecting his momma.

Of course, I lived in this place many, many moons ago. It looks quite different now just as the rest of the neighborhood. Gentrification has swept through the area with increased property values and the displacement of lower-income families and small businesses. In all of my moves, moving into 1212 was the only time that a neighbor ever brought me flowers. She was an older African-American woman who walked with a slight limp most likely due to her size, just as my maternal grandmother did. I remember those flowers; they were picked from her own yard. They were slightly wilted but they were the most perfect flowers I had ever seen.

Recently walking from campus to the train station, I passed this house just a few blocks down from 1212. It once was a mediocre looking brick house. Now with a touch of black paint, it looks amazing. Of course, that isn’t all that has been done. The entire home has had its soul cut out and remodeled to accommodate two overpriced condos.  One half of the home sold for the asking price of $768,000; the other half for a more modest $698,000 or at least this is how it is posted on Zillow. The pre-gutted home can be found here. 

Initially I was so taken with the black on black in the middle of what once was seen as a drab street that I forgot what it means to stand out. 

Oftentimes, we gothy girls stand out even when we do not plan to or do not want to. What does it mean to blend? What does it mean to stand out among a crowd? What happens when your guts are torn out so that you become different? I guess we’ve all been there at some time or another.

I cannot help but wonder if the new owners of overly pricey condos will receive flowers from their neighbors; I’m assuming that they will not.

...this too shall pass...

 “Rain is grace; rain is the sky descending to the earth;

without rain, there would be no life.”

~John Updike

We’ve had about three weeks of rainy, dreary days. The sun came out today and just as I was preparing to go walking, the sky fell…a thunderstorm. But hey, we did have some sun!

Just once this week was I able to walk to and from the train station. As I walked through an old section of DC, I was taken by the flowers- a variety of colors of roses from yard to yard, an amazing Scotch broom, and peonies of amazing shades. I was so taken by one rose bush that towered over me at about 8 ft. It had the largest, most perfect off-white turning into yellow blooms. I stood on the sidewalk just gazing into the yard hoping no one was inside staring back at me. I was so mesmerized by the roses that I even failed to take a picture. I was that in the moment.

This morning before the storm, I snapped a few pictures from my garden. It’s been a terribly busy and stressful week. It’s also been an emotionally challenging one. The flowers remind me that after many, many days of rain, beauty returns. We cannot have the beautiful flowers without those beautiful overcast, rainy days. Ebb and flow, remembering that there are two different ways to read, “This too shall pass.”

...Orient to the Occident, gardens & trees...

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature,

he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”

~John Muir

Josiah Conder's 1893 publication of Landscape Gardening in Japan (Kelly & Walsh, 1893) introduced the aesthetic of Japanese gardens to the Western world. The publication came out the same year that the Mr. & Mrs. Dooley built Maymont. Not surprisingly, Mrs. Dooley who was a devoted student of horticulture took an active role in planning gardens on the estate. I cannot imagine that with this aesthetic being so fashion-forward for the time that Mrs. Dooley would pass up having one.

From the website, the Dooley’s may have hired a master Japanese gardener named Muto who had created gardens for other East Coast estates including one in Philadelphia.

Maymont’s Japanese Garden is by far my favorite on the estate, and is probably where I developed a love for Japanese maples. With their leaves in hues of deep reds and having a furry-like appearance, Japanese maples stand out among other trees. In October, some of the Japanese maples even have a beautiful orange shade. They are easily my favorite tree.

 

Maymont’s garden combines various styles of traditional Japanese gardens including a residential style garden that was popular at the turn of the century. It also is considered a promenade or “stroll garden” where visitors follow a path around the garden to see carefully-composed landscapes and changing impressions of nature.

Presently in the garden you will find blooming azaleas and dogwood trees, along with a 100-year-old Japanese maple, Acer palmatum.

While the gardens on the estate have changed since the original designs there are a few reminders that this once belonged to a family. 

 

 

You may wonder how the Japanese Garden connects to a goth aesthetic. For me, it is the return to the idea of the picturesque.  Literally meaning “in the manner of a picture; fit to be made into a picture”, this along with the aesthetic and cultural strand of Gothic, was a part of the emerging Romantic sensibility of the 1900s.

Horace Walpole, author of The Castle of Otranto which is generally regarded as the first Gothic novel, explains, "I am almost as fond of the Sharawaggi, or Chinese want of symmetry, in buildings, as in grounds or gardens" (1750). Wait, what? Many scholars have attempted to trace the etymology of Sharawaggi , which is often spelled sharawadgi, to various Eastern terms for garden design. While the scholars may continue to debate this, Walpole links this term with irregularity, asymmetry, and independence from rigid conventions seen in classical design, all of which is found in the traditional Japanese Garden. And just like an old Gothic novel, you never know what is going to creep around the next corner. That was how I felt when I was meandering through a secret trail surrounded by bamboo only to discover some old steps. Where might these lead?