Come Love Me Again

It was Saturday, and so there was a wedding in the garden. But this one was a little different. As I walked out the atrium doors and entered the garden, I met a middle-aged man, with salt-and-pepper hair, whom I now believe to have been the groom. What tipped me off? He was dressed in a formal suit and was wearing a flower in his lapel. It seemed a dead giveaway.

As I walked past him, I asked what time the wedding would be. My goal was to get in and out of the wedding garden before it started. Not knowing this, he looked at me doubtfully, as if to say, "Who the heck are you?"  

“Ten o’clock,” he replied out loud, clearly puzzled as to why I wanted to know this.

“Ah,” I said, lifting my camera to reassure him as why I was in the garden. “Then I have lots of time.” Finally realizing that I was not paparazzi, he smiled, and I went on my way.

Allium "Star of Persia." By Divine Ms. Moon.

After a few preliminary stops among the allium and the dogwoods, I moved into the wedding garden, where I began circling the outer perimeter to photograph the peonies. 

Peony. By Divine Ms. Moon

After a few minutes, the wedding party began to assemble. The man with the salt-and-pepper hair seemed to play a major role in getting things organized.  A musician arrived soon afterwards.  He was another middle-aged, but balding man, in a blue shirt and khakis, wielding an electric guitar and a rather powerful speaker system. After speaking for a few moments with the man I had originally encountered, he began to warm up.  His first selection was John Denver's "Annie’s Song."

"You fill up my senses

Like a night in the forest,

Like the mountains in spring time,

Like a walk in the rain ...."

While I certainly admired the choice for a garden wedding, the music also clearly pegged the newlyweds as being somewhere within my own generation. 

Sentimental tears began to overflow.  I sat alone under an arbor at the edge of the wedding garden and just listened, a little embarrassed to be an intruder into someone else's happiness.  I made my escape just as guests began to arrive.  As I walked away, I heard that song again --

"Come let me love you,
Let me give my life to you,
Let me drown in your laughter
Let me die in your arms ...."

Sometime later, the wedding party began to disperse into small groups that wandered around the garden.  Standing in front of a rugosa rose bush, I thought how appropriate that the most hardy of roses should bloom for this wedding.  

Rugosa rose. By Divine Ms. Moon

And I knew that, in the wedding garden, there were peonies, petunias, pansies, stocks, and many other flowers to fill the senses with color and fragrance.  For a brief moment, I closed my eyes and imagined that it had been my wedding. It was simple, but it was perfect.

I could almost feel their joy.

"Let me lay down beside you

Let me always be with you,

Come let me love you

Come love me again ...." 

John Denver, "Annie's Song"

A Friend

"A friend is a present you give yourself."

~ Robert Louis Stevenson (born November 13, 1850)

By Divine Ms. Moon

Blue Gardens

By Divine Ms. Moon

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths

 among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” 

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald (born September 24, 1896)

Unexpected Roses

I didn’t go looking for roses today. 

We had a hard frost in the area last night, and it seemed unlikely that I would find any. So I never went near the rose garden. Instead, I decided to concentrate on photographing the interplay of September light on trees and foliage. 

It was so cold this morning that I expected there to be no one else in the garden. So, when I pulled into the parking lot, I was surprised to find that there was already quite a bit of activity. I snapped a few shots outside, disappointed that the beautiful trumpet flowers I had photographed last week had already been cleared out, and then went into the atrium to make my way out to the main gardens. I knew immediately that something was up. Staff and volunteers were bustling around, and two people were setting up a long L-shaped table to sell something. Uh, oh. I said in my mind. 

As I walked on, I encountered a staff member who recognizes me whenever I come. She smiled and said cheerfully, “Planning to take photos of the quilts today?” Aha. The annual fall quilt show.  “And,” she continued enthusiastically, “We’re having a Thai festival.” This time, I said “oh” out loud. 

Well, I said to myself, somewhat relieved, that means that it will still be quiet outside. So, after chatting with this lady for another few moments, out the double-doors to the gardens I went.

And, for the most part, quiet it was. Bright and crisp and quiet. But it was still very cold, especially in the shade. After forty-five minutes, a hundred photos or so, and a moderate chill, I suddenly had an irresistible urge to see the quilts. So, I went back inside, paid the admission donation, and went down the long runway into the old atrium where about 60 intricate and gayly-hued quilts were on full display, surrounded by flowers. This is, after all, a botanical garden. I didn’t photograph them all, by any means, only those that seemed unusually intricate, unusually beautiful, or just plain unusual. 

As I did so, I was following the guide and jotting notes of which quilts I had photographed for later use in attributions. I stopped for a few minutes in front of the quilt pictured below, contemplating. In the background, I could hear a group of Thai worshippers chanting in an adjoining room, lulling me into quiet serenity. 

The guide said the name of the quilt was “Grand Central.” Huh? When did they build Grand Central Orientale? I shook my head and began taking photos. The quilt had a dramatic black border not visible here. To me, in overall effect, it was by far the most beautiful quilt in the show. So I wanted to make sure I captured it. In the end, I don’t think I really did.

Detail from "Grand Central" by Joanne Cripps
(Quilting by Cindy Haas)
Photographed by Divine Ms. Moon

Anyway, as I was standing there, three people came up behind me and stood quietly discussing the quilts in this group. They seemed fairly knowledgeable about quilts, so I turned my head back and asked, “Can you think why on earth this quilt might have been called “Grand Central”? The three people looked at each other, seemingly puzzled. Then one of them, a small elderly lady with a lovely smile, said in total deadpan, “’Grand Central’ is the name of the pattern." “Oh,” I said, brightly. “Now it makes sense. For the life of me I couldn’t figure it out. It seems a rather undistinguished name for such a beautiful quilt. I mean, all those peonies and wild roses. I wonder what she was thinking.” I turned back to what I was doing, still somewhat perplexed.

The same lady said quietly to the back of my head, “Well, why don’t YOU name it?” Immediately, alarm bells began going off. I stopped still in the middle of framing a shot. Without turning around, I said, “You made it, didn’t you?” “Yes,” she replied. 

Needless to say, I turned almost as red as the peonies in the quilt. But when I turned around again, she was still smiling, and she proved to be extremely gracious, as were her companions. We continued to talk casually as we walked around the show. She taught me a few things about quilting and something about grace. When I commented that other people were likely to wonder why she had named the quilt as she had, and joked that I was just lucky enough to have said it out loud in front of her, she replied, “That’s quite all right. There were many worse things that you could have said.” 

Not likely. Despite my inability to capture its full essence, “Grand Central” was the most beautiful quilt in the show, and its maker was even more beautiful. 

I didn’t go looking for roses in the garden today, but I found them.

Detail from "Grand Central" by Joanne Cripps
Photographed by Divine Ms. Moon

Garden Adventures ~ What I Thought I Knew

By Divine Ms. Moon

I was sitting on a bench in the shade in the botanical garden today when a busload of tourists arrived. "Oh, lordy," I said, much to the amusement of the man who was walking through the shade garden at the time. "If you move quickly," he said encouragingly, a sly look in his eyes, "maybe you can beat them."

And maybe not. They caught up to me right outside the kitchen garden. To be fair, they cheated and went both ways around the old house. I tried to concentrate on the hosta flowers ahead of me and braced myself for the onslaught of ooh-ing and ah-ing.

"Ooh," said one of two women who approached where I was standing, "those are tall." "They certainly are," I replied genially, although inside I was flinching, "I have never seen hosta flowers tall enough to look in the eye." "Oh," responded the second woman, "those are just Krossa Regal. I have a ton of them in my garden, but I hate those flowers, so I cut them all off." "The other woman said, "Krossa Regal, yes, that's right."

As turned to watch them continue their way down the path, I began to wonder just who these tourists might be. After a while, I met another group, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over a mass of short blue flowers along the path in the wedding garden. "Periwinkle," one said. "Nope," said another, confidently. "Geranium -- probably Himalyan." Oh, really, I said, quietly to myself, and a bit skeptically. But on the other side of the garden, I found the marker near another mass of the same flower. "Geranium himalayense," it read. I realized then, I was in the presence of some not-so-ordinary, elderly garden tourists.

I paused for a while on the bench overlooking the knot garden to review the photos I had already taken. When I looked up, I noticed an obvious shot in front of me that I had, nevertheless, never seen before. The focus was tricky, so I had to fiddle with it for a while, and when I had finally gotten what I thought I wanted, I picked up again and walked toward the pergola overlooking the lily pond, where two of the tourists were now sitting, eating their lunch. They invited me to sit and continued to eat.

I asked where they were from. They named a city about 80 miles from here. "Ah. Garden club?" I asked cautiously. "Well, yes," said one of the women quietly, "Master gardener club." And then I knew exactly why they weren't behaving like the ordinary, casual garden visitor. I was impressed and appropriately humbled.

"Getting any interesting shots?" asked the other woman after we had talked for a while about the house and the garden and what gardens there were to see in their city. "Actually, yes," I said, pointing vaguely back toward the place from which I had just come. "I found that if you sit on that bench and look down toward the knot garden through the fence, you can get a pretty interesting shot." "May we see?" one of the ladies asked. "Of course," I replied, and turned on my viewfinder, dialing to the photo above. They both looked at if for a moment, and then both glanced around the garden, seemingly puzzled. After another moment, one of the women said, "That's beautiful, but where did you find the stained glass?"

Exactly, I said to myself. And I was so relieved to learn that I knew at least one thing that those master gardeners didn't. I hope to be one of those myself, someday, and then I will know for sure what now I just think I know.

Joy in the Garden

One of my favorite garden plants is the stargazer lily, a spectacular variety of the oriental lily. Not only are they beautiful, but they remind many people of weddings, and thus, they produce joyful, romantic associations. I have one colleague, however, who hates the scent of stargazers, claiming they remind him of funerals. I tend to ignore him, as he also thinks global warming is a good thing because it improves his golf game.

By Divine Ms. Moon

In other times, I had stargazers in my own garden, along with many other lilies of oriental, Asiatic, and daylily persuasions. This is what the stargazers looked like in my local botanical garden this morning. No matter what my colleague says, my associations with stargazer lilies will always be joyful. 

Coming To Be

I met another photographer in the garden today, and we compared stories. She is a stay-home mom who picked up a camera one day and found that it fulfills something within her that needed filling. I have a similar story about something that needed filling, but we don't need to canvass it here. When this lady asked me what kind of photos I like to take, I struggled to explain how I am interested in impressionist, or watercolor, photography. She looked at me curiously, obviously not grasping what I was saying. She is interested in portraits of children. I can understand why she did not seem to relate to what I was saying. 

We parted company and I went back to taking pictures. I called back to her that she really would be interested in the stargazer lilies, which were putting on quite a show in the wedding garden. She responded politely, but she never did come back that way. I believe she was chasing butterflies, and I hope she had great success. A short time later, I was sitting on a bench, contemplating an arched doorway a few feet away. A single branch of a climbing rose was trailing down into the open arch, drifting gently back and forth with the soft, cool breeze. It knew it was calling me, but several shots later, foiled by a very fickle sun, I still had taken not a single shot with which I was satisfied. And so, a little frustrated, I stood up, composed myself to go on my way, and walked ahead, under the branch, and through the arch toward the formal rose garden beyond.

The reason we're here right now is that I have tried to train myself to always stop and look back because, sometimes, the best shots are the last shots. And so it was today. The light looking back was perfect. 

By Divine Ms. Moon

I stood there for a while after I finished taking photos in that spot, wishing the lady I met could have been there in that moment, so I could have shown her the photographer that I am coming to be.

I think she would have understood.