Category Archives: writing

on writing, rewriting, & taking notes

Anticipation

Beginning

I wanted to include photographs from the first blooms in my garden. My computer, the cloud, the gods are not permitting. So I will describe my first discovery.

Imagine a three-pointed miniature iris, a dark purple, touched with bright gold drops like eyes:

http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf/Gardening/Bulbs/Growing-Miniature-Iris-Dwarf-Iris-.html

Then the tiniest viola:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Viola_(plant) by Phillipe Clement.

Finally, a pair of Johnny jump-ups:

http://www.galleryofpix.com/imagegallery/14_gallery-of-flowers

The viola is also called Heart’s Ease, and no wonder. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it plays a more potent role. Oberon sees Cupid’s arrow find a target but it is intercepted by the silvery beams of the chaste moon. He tells Puck,

Yet mark’d I where the bolt of Cupid fell:
It fell upon a little western flower,
Before milk-white, now purple with love’s wound,
And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Fetch me that flower; the herb I shew’d thee once:
The juice of it on sleeping eye-lids laid
Will make or man or woman madly dote
Upon the next live creature that it sees.

May we all see these western flowers in fleeting spring, heralding the way to midsummer.

planted sweet peas

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bought seeds

bought a long garden fork

fine-tools.com

dug the ground, made a furrow one inch deep, planted, and watered

apparently you can get this at Ace Hardware.

Stuck some long twigs in to net a string support…

–Oh! I was looking for an illustration of twine, and googled “string, garden”, but ommitted the comma. This was what I found: string gardens!

These creations are by horticulturist Fedor van der Valk. From inhabitat.com, I found a quotation by him, and a description of his work:

“For a while I wanted to make animated videos with crocheted landscapes which were a kind of 3-dimensional spider web covered in moss and grass” says van der Valk. “The idea was to create bonsai-esque plants. To keep the landscapes really airy, I decided to work with hanging plants.”

“Van der Valk uses a deft crocheting stitch to whip up the “frames,” so to speak, for his round masterpieces. He then impregnates them with different combinations of moss and earth which help the spheres to keep their shape. Some of the string gardens are mere fistfuls and some are massive – all are beautiful.”