Human Flower Project

Sunday, September 30, 2007

A Peony to Build a Myth On

Writer Isak Dinesen might have achieved immortality by introducing peonies to Kenya, but she managed it another way.

Isak Dinesen
in 1958
Photo: Carl Van Vechten

We are prone to literary binges. Grazing through writers, we’ll suddenly fall deeply in love with one and then read nearly everything she or he produced – a kind of serial monogamy. Carolyn Keene, D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Virginia Woolf, Flannery O’Connor, Graham Greene, Tolstoy…2007 has been our Isak Dinesen year.

Karen Blixen (her given name) was born in Denmark, lived for 17 years on a coffee farm in Kenya, and wrote mostly in English. We’ve read that as with her enchanting prose, she arranged flowers in eccentric fashion — something we hope to learn more about in months to come.

But for now, we’re finishing her memoir Out of Africa, an experience we would no more adulterate with Robert Redford than gild a lily. In it we found this:

“Once when I was at home, an old lady in Denmark gave me twelve fine peony-bulbs which I brought into the country with me at some trouble, as the import regulations about plants were strict. When I had them planted, they sent up, almost immediately, a great number of dark carmoisin curvilinear shoots, and later a lot of delicate leaves and rounded buds. The first flower which unfolded was called Duchesse de Nemours, it was a large single white peony, very noble and rich, it gave out a profusion of fresh sweet scent. When I cut it and put it in water in my sitting-room, every single white person entering the room stopped and remarked upon it. Why, it was a peony! But soon after this, all the other buds of my plants withered and fell off, and I never got more than that one flower.

Duchesse de Nemours (Paeonia lactiflora)
Photo: MOBOT

“Some years later I talked with the English gardener of Lady McMillan, of Chiromo, about peonies. “We have not succeeded in growing peonies in Africa,” he said, “and shall not do so till we manage to make an imported bulb flower here, and can take the seed from that flower. This is how we got Delphinium into the Colony.” In that way I might have introduced peonies into the country and made my name immortal like the Duchesse of Nemours herself; and I had ruined the glory of the future by picking my unique flower and putting it in water.”

“Visitors to the Farm,” Out of Africa
Isak Dinesen, 1937

This vignette, with its fabulous gothic undertones, sent us searching of course for Duchesse de Nemours and into a conundrum. Every reference and photograph we’ve found shows a double white peony, “rich” yes, but perhaps too frilly to warrant “noble.” Could the labels on those bulbs have been shuffled around on the trip from Denmark to Dinesen’s plantation in the Ngong Hills of Kenya?

Victoria, Queen of Great Britain
and Princess Victoire, Duchess de Nemours
By Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1852
Photo: World Roots

A side note: we’re not sure which Duchesse of Nemours was immortalized by this beautiful flower. The most famous person to go under that name was Marie d’Orleans, a memorist herself of 17th Century France (Like Blixen, she was an aristocrat with a proto-democratic – or at least anti-royalist – spirit). Far more likely, though, the white peony was named for Queen Victoria’s first cousin – also named Victoria – a favorite childhood playfriend who later became Duchesse of Nemours. She died suddenly at age 35, 10 days after giving birth to her daughter Blanche.

Wouldn’t naming a white peony (single or double) for such a tragic figure have been just the Victorian response? (well, that and a few necro-decorative artworks).

The horticulturists out there will have to help us evaluate what Lady McMillan’s gardener had to say about introducing peonies to the highlands of Kenya. We’ve found sources that say peonies grow wild in Northwest Africa and some tree peonies have flourished in South African gardens. Anyway, it seems to us that since peonies are perennials, if Dinesen has nursed her first plants along, they might have bloomed better in subsequent years. Cutting that “single” blossom need not have “ruined the glory of the future.”

With Karen Blixen, it’s quite possible the whole white peony story was invented, another fable in the long tale called “Isak Dinesen.” It may outlast marble and all the Duchesses of Nemours.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Bip and His Flower

Marcel Marceau was buried in Paris September 26, his stovepipe hat and red flower standing by.

Family members (and two old friends from the stage) mourned mime Marcel Marceau during his funeral September 26, at Pere Lachaise in Paris.
Photo: Benoit Tessier, for Reuters

Born March 23, 1923 in Strasbourg, France - died September 23, 2007 in Cahors, France. In between there were flocks of flying hands, the invention of moonwalking, a red flower of tulle and a hat, squashed and tipped to international crowds. When Marcel Marceau was buried Wednesday at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, ”the top hat and red flower were placed on a stand next to the mime’s coffin and later in front of his grave,” wrote Rachid Aouli for AP.

“About 300 people attended the ceremony, some of them fans holding roses or carnations.... Some mourners threw flowers on the coffin, others placed small stones by the grave. ‘The rest is silence,’ and ‘To our dear maestro, the show goes on,’ were among the messages on the funeral wreaths.”

Marcel Marceau
by Hirschfeld
Image: George J. Goodstadt

Modeling his act on Charlie Chaplin’s tramp and the 18th Century’s Pierrot, Marceau combined clowning and dance into the art of mime. Marceau usually performed alone on stage, save his equally silent sidekick, the red flower. It had to be. With the white face makeup and black and white costume (fit for a 20th century harlequin) the red blossom was an emotional antenna, its extension as warm and suggestive as mercury rising from the bulb of a thermometer. Like the rest of mime, you could find it poignant or trite—maybe both.

In the New York Times’ good obituary, James Clarity (who also died last week) quoted the world famous clown:

“’This character Bip is a funny, sad fellow,’ Mr. Marceau once observed, ‘and things are always happening to him that could happen to anybody. Because he speaks with the gestures and the movement of the body, everyone knows what is happening to him, and he is popular everywhere — Scandinavia, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Austria, wherever he has traveled.’” In all these things, Bip was much like his companion in bloom.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Milkweed Pearls for Lord Shiva

Sandy Ao shows how Kolkata honors the great destroyer deity—with blooms from an invasive plant.

Garlands of Calotropis gigantea, Giant milkweed flowers
Photo: Sandy Ao

“The gods would not refuse even the trivial erukku for worship,” declared the Purananuru 2000 years ago.

Trivial? Perhaps “lowly” would be a better translation. Erukku is the Tamil name for Calotropis gigantea, growing now as it must have back then— as “a common wasteland weed” across South Asia. Also known as swallowwort, giant milkweed and (by its flatterers) crown flower, this poisonous plant is sacred to Hinduism’s most fearsome deity - Shiva.

Since Monday is Shiva’s special day (as are the 13th night of the waxing moon and the 14th day), there seemed no time like the present to convey a beautiful set of Calotropis pictures Sandy Ao gathered around her home city, Kolkata, India.

Women selling calotropis garlands
Mullickghat market, Kolkata
Photo: Sandy Ao

Sandy writes, “There are no specific seasons for Calotropis and Datura,” another flower sacred to Shiva – and also a poisonous one. “Mainly these are wild flowers, not cultivated like marigold and tuberose. They are used through out the year - especially Calotropis. Wherever there are Shiva’s pictures, symbols (the Lingam) or statues, we will see a garland of Calotropis around them.” Sandy also makes note, after many visits to the big Mullickghat flower market, “I see more women selling Datura and Calotropis garlands than the men.” Threaded into strands, the calotropis flowers look like lavender pearls.

Shiva appears throughout Kolkata in many forms. He blows a conch shell on kitschy calendars and poses with his trident and, sometimes, snakes coiling about his blue neck at the lotto stand.

Startling to rheumy western eyes, Lord Shiva is also embodied in stone phalluses – the “lingam” Sandy referred to – that symbolize his chthonic, reproductive powers. We would suppose these sacred stones are ”erected” in Shiva’s many hundreds of temples across India, but as Sandy‘s photographs show, they also appear beside busy thoroughfares, usually under banyan trees, and at what seem to be streetside shrines. In nearly all of Sandy’s photographs, one can see pearly strings of calotropis flowers honoring the great god.

Devotee prays at a Lingam, representing Shiva, at a Kolkata street shrine
Photo: Sandy Ao

She spoke with a number of flower sellers about just how calotropis, datura and magnolia (also sacred to Shiva, and lots more expensive than the other blossoms) are used with bael leaves in devotions: “I was told that during the offering of flowers to Lord Shiva, the bael leaf will be placed on top of Lord Shiva’s head/Lingam. Datura /Magnolia will be on Lord Shiva’s ears. If it’s a lingam, these flowers will be placed above the bael leaf and kept on top of the Lingam. On the floor in front of Lord Shiva / Lingam, first a bael leaf will be placed; only then will other varieties of flowers be spread around the ground.

“And Calotropis will always come as a garland for Lord Shiva.”

Image of Lord Shiva
decorated with marigolds, bael leaf, and calotropis buds
Photo: Sandy Ao

Shiva’s name means ”auspiciousness, welfare” though he wields the power of destruction.  “He represents darkness and is said to be the ‘angry god.’ However, according to Hinduism, creation follows destruction.” (Picasso called painting “a sum of destructions,” didn’t he?) Just so, we learn, “Shiva is also regarded as a reproductive power, which restores what has been dissolved.”

Fitting, that that this god of fertility is honored by what some might also call an “invasive plant.”

Sandy tells us that in Hyderabad, “Calotropis grows wildly and plentifully, especially in the unattended compounds. Whereas, in Bengal (Kolkata), people collect the buds before they are fully bloomed and turn them into garlands for Shiva.” Lowly, perhaps, but much in demand.

“If one desires to worship God externally,” the old poem says, “let him just take the flowers which have fallen from the tree and worship the Supreme Siva here on some external symbol, just as He is worshipped in the heart.” The heart that bursts open like a pod of gossamer and seed.

Saturday, September 22, 2007

Scrutiny on the National Beauty of Trinidad and Tobago: Chaconia

A wild poinsettia, hurriedly chosen as the national flower, bears red flags and political history.

Stamp with Chaconia
Trinidad and Tobago
Image: ProTok

When Trinidad and Tobago declared independence from Great Britain, 1962, a group of “deciders” came together to choose the new nation’s official symbols. And from reading Julian Kenny’s fine piece for the Trinidad Express, it seems they were an astute and fast-acting bunch, flowerwise.

They selected a glorious Trinidadian, the wild poinsettia known as “chaconia,” to represent them. As befits a national emblem, the chaconia had color, locality, and timing working in its favor—and even a dubious etymology.

Many islanders assume that this plant, with its long stem of scarlet flowers, was named for Don Jose Maria Chacon, Trinidad’s last Spanish governor.  Reasonable...except that the complex history of Trinidad (and Tobago) seems to owe a lot less to the Spanish than to English, French, African, and Chinese settlers. If you’re a bit rusty on these matters, check this good history site. )

Doing the chaconne engraving by H. Fletcher, 1735
Collection: The Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Photo: Encyclopædia Britannica

No, it seems much more likely that this amazing flower Warszewiczia coccinea, got its local name from “’chaconier’ after the French chaconne, a song/dance in which the dancers festooned themselves with small red flags that waved about as they danced.” The blooms do resemble tiny red flags. And with the world renown of calypso music and even “limbo,” it just seems right that the flower of this particular nation should be named for a flashdance.

(Kenny notes that Trinidad’s natives call this plant “wakamy.”)

Also in its favor, the wild chaconia always blooms just at the time of Trinidad and Tobago’s Independence Day, August 31. Waverly Fitzgerald wrote us recently about her family’s custom of adopting certain flowers that bloom right at folks’ birthdays as their personal “birthday flowers.” Why shouldn’t countries do the same?

And finally, the tasteful people of Trinidad and Tobago considered that chaconia’s red and green color coordinated well with the flag and national coat of arms.

The official Chaconia is Trinidad’s single wild variety. But today, we understand, a double chaconia, first propagated by David Auyong in 1957, is plentiful in gardens and nurseries across both Trinidad and Tobago. Carlyle Chang, one of the original “deciders” from 1962, told writer Johnny Lee, “We were not aware of the existence of the double variety at the time; otherwise we might have considered it over the single.” With six weeks to make these decisions, we’d say the committee made an excellent choice.

Chaconia Medal (gold)
Photo: Medals.org

National authorities here have awarded the Chaconia medal for forty years “to persons deemed to have rendered long or meritorious service in the jurisdiction of Community Service or Social Welfare” for Trinidad & Tobago.” It’s a red and green ribbon and a medal struck with the image of this blooming plant in gold, silver, and bronze.

We’re grateful to Julian Kenny for his excellent article illuminating the human-cultural freight behind this beautiful Caribbean plant. That freight includes some baggage, too. Kenny writes of the Chaconia medal, “Of the 200-plus awarded between 1969 and 2002, 84 per cent went to males and 16 per cent to females, while 77 per cent went to one “cultural” group and 23 per cent to another. Guess who! The latter, and women, have only a token place in the Order, regardless of their contributions and constitutional guarantees of equality.”

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Parc André Citröen: Loved & Loathed

A Paris park polarizes opinions. What say vous?

35-acres of controversy: Paris’s Parc Citröen
Photo: Mairie de Paris

So which is it?

Brilliant? “An exercise in post-modernist geometry.” Or abominable? “Barely more hospitable than the car factory it replaced.”

Our friends Corrie MacLaggan and Oliver Bernstein were in Paris not long ago and, being adventurous types, metroed out to visit one of the city’s newest and most debated public spaces: Parc André Citröen. It covers 35 acres along the Seine in the 15th arrondissement, on the same site where Citröen once built his bug-eyed cars. The factory closed in the 1970s and some twenty years later, after the auto plant was razed, Alain Provost and Gilles Clément won the competition to design a park here.

The description below—a rarity—idles calmly in neutral. It says that the Parc Citroen includes

“four themes (artifice, architecture, movement and nature) with an overall transition from urban to rural.” We can’t quite picture rurality in the 15th, but, to continue..."The use of water and clipped plants carry a distant echo of the French Baroque. A White Garden and a Black Garden are set into the urban fabric and lead on to the park’s central feature - a vast rectangular lawn sliced through by a diagonal path. Two glasshouse pavilions, separated by a pavement of dancing fountains, stand at the urban end of the lawn. The River Seine flows at the far end. One flank of the lawn is bounded by a monumental canal and the other by two sets of small gardens: the six Serial Gardens and a wild Garden in Movement.”

Okay, “dancing fountains” pirouettes toward praise. But it’s nothing like this encomium from two fervent urban planners at MIT.  Here is a clear case of park envy:

“If Boston were to adopt a park development approach for the Central Artery exemplified by Parc Citroen,” they write, “the required capital and leadership would dwarf anything so far considered.” We think that means “It ain’t gonna happen in Bean Town” but we trust that any park has dwarf potential. “Parc Citroen represents a level of design, construction finish, and maintenance that exceeds Boston standards. As Robert Campbell of the Globe has pointed out, Paris spends as much as eight times more per park than other French cities. Boston won’t do this. There are too many competing political constituencies whose influence exceeds that of public open space advocates. Also, Citroen—for better or for worse—represents high-concept triumphant over public participation. The American style of review that imposes constraints on the creative process has not yet reached Paris. Whatever else can be said, Citroen is not an example of lowest common denominator design.”

Vive l’autorite! Nothing like that grand modernist tradition of ignoring the local citizenry for achieving “best design” (whether architectural or genetic).

For a radically different assessment, check out the Project for Public Space. This group elects Parc Citroen to its ”Hall of Shame.” Why? The PPS jury says the park is “indifferent to users’ needs.” It finds the four themes “a series of fussy little design vignettes.” Further, the park, says PPS, “lack(s) even the most basic supporting amenities, such as seating or picnic tables” and did we forget to mention “the entrances, playgrounds, seating, and activity areas are complete failures” ?

Please DO look over the Hall of Shame, as a very lively discussion ensues. Many visitors protest, saying they consider it “a real jewel.” And, what seems to us a conclusive testimonial, in the park’s favor, one writes:  “Having spent many more days in Parc André Citroën than the five-time observers, I have to disagree. I’ve slept on the lawn, in the shade and in the sun, on both hot and cool days and used the steps and ramps of the jewel-box accesses to recline while reading or napping.”

Deep purple iris in the garden at Parc André Citröen, June 2007
Photo: Corrie MacLaggan and Oliver Bernstein

Corrie and Oliver appear to have maintained full consciousness during their visit, and their sense of equanimity as well. Corrie said nothing about “jewels” but did very much like the park’s gorgeous stand of deep purple iris. As do we!

To reach Parc André Citröen, take the Metro to Balard or Javel. Thank you, Corrie and Oliver.

Monday, September 17, 2007

The Flower-Buddhas of Burma

A tradition of floral sculpture—and a livelihood—are dwindling among the Pa-O in Burma.

Myanmar/Burma
with inset of Lake Inle
Map: Shwe Inn Tha

What’s Buddha made of?

We refer not to Siddhartha Gautama or enlightened others but to the figurines long made, traded and devoutly offered in Burma (Myanmar).  Kyi Wai’s recent article describes how a floral craft of the Lake Inle region—the molding of dried flowers into statues of Buddha—is vanishing.

“Generations of craftsmen have been making the exquisite statuettes for centuries, molding them from the petals of dried flowers, mixed with powder, teak sawdust and resin. Figurines molded from the petals of flowers and donated to lakeside temples are invested with miraculous powers by the Pa-O, Shan and Intha people who live in the region.” Smaller statues also sell, of course, to travelers as souvenirs of this beautiful place. 

“The rising cost of the raw materials, particularly the teak sawdust and resin, and encroaching competition from manufacturers of cheap wooden and plastic Buddhas have brought the local handicraft business practically to a standstill,” Wai writes. According to one source, there are only two or three traditional flower-Buddha makers left. “Twenty years ago, a flourishing demand for the Buddhas kept at least a dozen craftsmen busy.” Some of these statues were larger than life, up to six feet tall.

Flower buddhas for sale at the Nam Pam Market along Lake Inle, Burma
Photo: The Irrawaddy

The problem doesn’t seem to be the cost of flowers (which are plentiful here) but the price of teak sawdust, which over the past two decades has risen from the US equivalent of 8 cents per bag to $2.30.

One wonders, too, whether changing religious observances in the area might also account for the decline. We’ve read that caves and temples surrounding the lake were once laden with Buddha figures. The Pindaya cave is said to contain thousands of statues of all sizes. Are there no longer so many pilgrims to this holy site? Or has their form of worship changed?

We’re grateful to learn of this fascinating craft from Burma, one of too many floral customs that appear to be fading in the face of industrialization, secularization and the high costs of living for many in the world. We hope to hear more from readers who live in Myanmar or are fortunate enough to travel to Inle Lake.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Corn Lily’s Black and White Magic

False hellebore, a mountain wildflower, has proven lethal, but scientists hope to harness its powers over cell development and use it to stop cancer.

Rocky Mountain Corn Lily (Veratrum californicum)
Photo: SW Colorado Wildflowers

The bane of sheep ranchers may lead to a breakthrough in oncology.

Veratrum californicum is a Rocky Mountain wildflower, variously known as the corn lily, false hellebore, and “skunk cabbage.” Several years ago, reports began appearing in the science journals that cyclopamine, a chemical compound in the corn lily, had shown some success in stopping “medulloblastoma cells, the most common brain cancer occurring in children,” from growing.

New research shows that this same compound may block the cell-signaling system of other brain cancers.

Cyclopamine seems to inhibit the so-called “Hedgehog gene” that directs cells to multiply. “Researchers have shown that radiotherapy fails to kill all cancer stem cells in glioblastoma” (brain tumors) “apparently because many of these cells can repair the DNA damage inflicted by radiation. The (Johns) Hopkins team suggests that blocking the Hedgehog pathway with cyclopamine kills these radiation-resistant cancer stem cells.” More than 10,000 people die of these brain tumors each year just in the U.S.

Thus far, the cyclopamine experiments have been conducted only on mice that have been implanted with human brain-cancer cells.

Cyclopamine
Image: wiki

Sheep ranchers have known for years about the power of Veratrum californicum. Ewes that ingest even small quantities of this plant during the 14th or 15th day of gestation have been known to give birth to deformed lambs. The terrible sign of corn lily poisoning is that offspring have only one eye (cyclopamine is named for the mythological one-eyed giant, Cyclops). The plant has posed a special problem for livestock in Southern Idaho and other parts of the Rockies, but more recently a lamb with this deformity appeared in Lublin, Wisconsin.

Rancher Jim Grajkowski said his sheep “had not been out west at any time, so they could not have been poisoned with the Corn Lily. The species most likely to have caused the damage was a close relative of Corn Lily, the False or White Hellebore (Veratrum viride), which ranges from New Brunswick and Quebec west to Minnesota, and southward as far as Maryland (but all the way to Georgia in the uplands) and in the Pacific Northwest.”

Cyclopamine, with its capacity to suppress the Hedgehog gene that signals cells to grow, is one powerful substance, capable of transforming “normal fetal and postnatal development, and, later in life, helping normal adult stem cells function and proliferate.” Quite a lot of voodoo for a Rocky Mountain wildflower.

The Johns Hopkins science team, led by Dr. Charles Eberhart, cautioned that the human brain research “is only in its early stages and there is much to be done before they can even begin to do testing with human subjects. They must first find out if it is possible for the drug to be delivered to the whole body safely and effectively or if it must only go into the brain. They must also see if there is any adverse effect on the healthy stem cells.”

Considering what this plant’s chemistry has done to sheep, we’d say so.

Students from Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory customarily parade
in “skunk cabbage” costumes on the 4th of July in Crested Butte, CO
Photo: mjcyrus

On the blithe (but still scientific) side, we’ve learned that the 4th of July celebration in Crested Butte, Colorado, includes a frolicsome Corn Lily custom. For the past twenty years, students of the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory have dressed up in the big pleated leaves of False hellebore and paraded through town. Maybe they’ve been expecting huge things from Veratrum californicum all along (or maybe its leaves are just big and plentiful enough each summer around Crested Butte to cover a multitude of embarrassments).

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Garden Going Since Before ‘Gardens For’

Revisiting nurseries and public gardens, John Levett catches sight of Henry James but still hasn’t found “The Pottering Garden.” If you have a map to it, in Cambridge, England.

At Cambridge Botanical Gardens
Photo: John Levett

By

Since when did the thought of going to a garden bring about palpitations of anticipation? Not recently? Not since the last time? Err...about 1984? Well, sometime around then. Or maybe it was just the last time when the arrival matched the picture in the head. Maybe I’ve had enough of gardens. Not gardening (although I start to flag this time of year). Just other people’s.

I was walking with a friend around Docwra’s Manor just outside Cambridge last year and realised it was the walkin’ and the talkin’ that made it and the thought of ‘this is the sort of place you get cream teas with scones and clotted cream and homemade blackcurrant jam and sticky fingers and nuclear strength tea imported in wooden casks from the Empire’ (it wasn’t).

Similar thing the year before. A friend was house-sitting for the Summer somewhere on the river near Hemingford Grey and would I fancy coming over for the evening and I did and it was The Manor where Lucy Boston had written the Green Knowe books. It was late evening and chilling up and friend’s dog went missing and so did I on the search and walking through the garden silence gave grounds for belief in the underworld.

So back to 1984, which had the best of times. And Ingwersen’s Nursery down in Sussex. For reasons now lost I’d got a passion for alpines. Read the books, bought the troughs, got the greenhouse (Yes! I know it’s not the same as an alpine house but it could pass for one!), seed from the Caucasus and points east sown but I wanted Instant Alpine and Ingwersen’s looked like it had the pedigree.

It was early April, bright, frosty, dawn. I drove down the A1, cleared London passing a ‘Troops Out’ protest in Parliament Square (Ireland in those days) and ate breakfast of salmon sandwiches at Biggin Hill overlooking the Weald listening to Johnny Mathis singing ‘Stardust.’ It’s still that clear. Ingwersen’s wasn’t a let down. They had the troughs and the alpine houses and the stone outcrops and the miniscule flowers which looked just like the illustrations and a steam railway at the bottom of the garden. It only needed three children in buttoned-up costume and their mother gathering her skirt and an old gentlemanly gentleman and ‘They were not the railway children to begin with.’ The thing I can’t recall is how much I spent. Guilt and memory consorting.

From that moment that nursery came to be a special place. Mustn’t go there too often then. So I didn’t but when I did it was always the first Saturday in April and the start time and the route and the salmon sandwiches on Biggin Hill stayed the same. Going back to special places needs its routines and its history. Then going back’s past its time. My last visit reminded me of what I knew—place has to do with time and how we were then and who and what was in our life.
Kew Gardens is like that for me, too. My mum, gran and me were always going to go to Kew for a day out but we never did. Gran died, then mum, by which time Kew had taken on myth. I got there in 1988 when life was spiritless and a friend called and said ‘Here’s a day out.’ We had lunch at The Old Rangoon near Hammersmith and thence to Kew but for my life then it was Hardy’s heath or Bronte’s moor at their most bleak. I arrived back there last year to see the new alpine house. Closed for repair, so I walked through the trees and sat by the Thames at Syon Reach, out of the crowd’s way, read and slept.

Cambridge Botanical Gardens
Photo: John Levett

I had similar feelings last week. I had a morning when I wake up and think ‘I’m closer to death than I was ten years ago so why am I spending time doing this’ and then restructure my morning accordingly but fall off the plan at half-past-one and take the (metaphorical) dog for a walk. To Cambridge Botanical Gardens.  I’ve lived near botanical gardens (or ones that look like them) throughout my life and can see the Nineteenth Century point of them and they make sense in the current epoch when seen as places of work but I’ve never got much fun out of them. Which meant that I turned up there with a strop on. (Going places annoyed at the thought of being there is a part of me I should deal with.)

History first. Darwin learnt there and C.C. Hurst speculated there on the origin of the rose. Enough.

I got taken with incidentals—the age of one to whom a seat was dedicated (forty-four’s no age to die); the noise of grass cutting, tree felling and traffic on Trumpington Road; a cat stalking ducks; a group of day-trippers tripping from bed to bed; yet another alpine house under renovation. And gardening as an industry.

It wasn’t so many decades ago that I used to stop off at the Rose Society’s gardens in St. Albans on my way home from a day’s teaching, shattered and in need of head-space; hardly a soul around; seats and beds and acres of island. Standing-room only now. Last Thursday it touched me that I’d become a Larkin-like mitherer—the crowds and the prams; the intrusions of working days into one’s own day; the concessions to the current public taste. Maybe it was the acknowledgement of the current zeitgeist that we have to be gardening ‘for’ something—the Dry Garden (no watering required), the Fen Garden (repopulate the wetlands), the Winter Garden (no time off for good behaviour elsewhere in the year), the Fragrant Garden (now with wind chimes).

The Pottering Garden? I couldn’t see it. The one where you walk about clipping a bit, thumb-in a cutting, layer a trailer, scrape a space for some bulbs, shift this to there. I passed the ‘listers’, secretary-like with pen and pad, readying for the raid on garden-centre, website and Tesco. Clear the space, break the pot, heel in. Sorted ‘til the next generation. Like decorating a room.

Towards the end of the afternoon I walked out towards the far edges of the garden to where the staff were finishing off. There was a young lad there, maybe late teens, maybe an apprentice. I remembered leaving school in 1960 aged fifteen. There were three employment options open—metalwork, carpentry and gardening. It was still (just) the age of ‘a job for life’ and there were still lads who’d go into gardening, maybe in the municipal gardens, maybe on an estate, and stay there for the duration and into a pension. I wondered if this lad tidying up the beds of hardy geraniums, wiping off his tools, collecting the scattered pots would still be hoeing fifty years hence, not rushing but giving plants, and himself, time.

Cambridge Botanical Gardens
Photo: John Levett

I was going through one of my periodic ‘Modern Times’ moments—remembrances of gardens strolled through by Barbara Pym characters and maiden aunts with grans. Then, for reasons unknown, thought of Henry James. James furnishing Lamb House in Rye; choosing plants for his walled garden as he chose furniture for his rooms; matching foliage to brick as he would tapestry to panelling. Then I thought of him arranging his papers and his pens, his shelves, his working ways with his views, his chairs with his fireplace, his comfort with his protection.

Then I thought ‘just like me’. The garden as comforter. I reflected on how I arrange my chairs around my garden; the morning site, the mid-morning-coffee site, the lunch-time-snack site. How the time must be ‘just so’ to catch the sun above the warehouse wall (no problem for James with that one!); the annoyance of next door’s children out early on Sunday (very Henry); saving the un-read article to partner the cake-treat from Fitzbillies (how to explain that, should he be seen?) My garden for me is the pair of slippers, the useful cardigan, gloves that fit, Marty’s recliner, Norm’s bar stool. Sometimes ‘the garden for the bone idle’; other times ‘the GWF Hegel garden’; in my mind’s eye ‘the John Cassavetes garden’ (think scripted but improvised); never ‘the Princess Diana bring your lame and sick garden’ (ten years and still no miracles?).

I walked towards the exit in late sun and met a couple sitting near the water garden; a daughter and her father who was working in the gardens at the outbreak of war in 1939. I thought of a conversation with him but thought better; he looked tired, or lost elsewhere. I left with a pleasantry and went looking for tea. I snuck something out and sat in the part of my plot known as the woodland garden—nine square metres underneath next door’s tree, next to my ferns and R.Davidii with its autumn heps. There was probably noise. No mithering.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The Yearbook’s a Stage

The photo of a New Hampshire teenager has been banned from the high school yearbook, because she’s holding a flower.

Image: Human Flower Project/Chicago Darch-Times

The great challenge of adolescence (which chases most of us around for the next sixty years) is to be both confidently individual and comfortably part of a group: how to stand out and fit in at the same time. It’s tricky, and at no time do the stakes feel higher for pulling that trick off than in high school, when everybody seems to be watching how well or poorly you’re performing.

...which brings us to Melissa Morin, age 17. Melissa is a senior at Merrimack High School in southern New Hampshire. She’s caught the theatre bug, so you can guess which side of the stand out/fit in continuum she leans toward. For her senior photo, Melissa posed in a sundress, barefooted, sitting on a trunk backstage at Manchester’s Palace Theatre. With intensely plucked eyebrows, a prepossessing gaze and an endearing teenage slump, she sits holding a bouquet of red flowers.

Gasp! Merrimack High, apparently, permits no “props” in senior photos, so Melissa’s picture may be omitted from the yearbook. ”The high school first set the policy two years ago, but only put it in writing this year, after ‘high profile legal cases’ were brought against school districts related to the content of yearbook photos. Blake Douglass, a Londonderry High School senior, brought a First Amendment case against Londonderry High in 2005 after yearbook editors refused to publish a photo of him with a broken-open shotgun slung on his shoulder.”

A district court judge rejected the student’s case, noting that it had been the yearbook editors, not the school or district, that had censored his picture. But the shotgun (and lawsuit) were enough to prompt several high schools into clamping on rules for senior portraits.

Melissa Morin’s senior picture, for Merrimack High School
Photo: Brent Mallard, via Nashua Telegraph

Actually, we couldn’t quite make out just what kinds of flowers Melissa held for the photo: clivia? alstroemeria? We consulted friend Brandon Kirkland of Enchanted Florist, who wrote back, “They are silk, so this is a tough one. My guess would be, in this order, a parrot tulip (the ruffled ones) or a poppy.” Whatever they were, they were enough to constitute a “prop” and so, due to Merrimack’s heavy-handed “fit in” editorial policy, they could keep Morin’s picture out of print.

We consider this silly, since everything that teenagers wear, say, drive around in, eat, or shampoo with constitutes a “prop.” Adolescence is prime time for fiddling with your personal “brand” and, as most of us know, figuring that out seems to necessitate all manner of foolish stunts and unbecoming costumes. It appears that Melissa has a firmer than average grasp on who she is and who she wants to be, and has chosen a shtick that’s perfectly harmless and, in fact, kind of fun. Her decision to hold flowers (as if she’s the lead actress just come back from her last curtain call) is delightful and completely in keeping with an (ahem) budding young actress.

At the same time we relish the controversy of Merrimack High School’s yearbook (the story’s gone out on the Associated Press wire and is being picked up all over the place) because it’s further proof of the cultural firepower of flowers—on a par, it seems, with shotguns.

To Melissa, we say, “Break a Leg!”

Sunday, September 09, 2007

Roel Flores: Bouquet with Cotton

A self-taught artist from the Rio Grande Valley bunches work and pleasure.

Roel Flores with a piece from his exhibit
“La Labor” at Texas Folklife, Austin
Photo: Human Flower Project

We came upon a startling bouquet this afternoon: yellow roses, a pink carnation and a stem of ripe cotton. From the the roots of all three, bound together, dangled a tiny accordion, guitar and heart. 

An untitled painting by Roel Flores of Westlaco, it hung among two dozen other works at Texas Folklife in Austin. The exhibit “La Labor” opened today, with conjunto music in the yard, refreshments and a good crowd, eager to hear Flores discuss his art. “Most of our history is not written,” Flores said, speaking of Tejano (Texas-Mexican) culture; he stood before a painting in which trucks drive though open books in the desert, under a radiant pink sky.

Untitled, by Roel Flores
from “La Labor”
Photo: Human Flower Project

At age 6, Flores began traveling with his family to California to pick grapes and lettuce, then back to South Texas for the cotton harvest. He dropped out of school in the 7th grade. “We were always trying to get out of the field work with the music,” he explains. But in fact his life has been a balancing of la labor y la musica. For thirty years, he played bajo sexto with various conjunto bands after the work days were over. The current exhibit includes portraits of his musical heroes Flaco Jimenez, Gilberto Perez, Don Antonio de la Rosa and the abuelo of conjunto music, accordion player Valerio Longoria.

Flores says his paintings are meant to show “the good side of hard times,” and they do. Furrows sprout accordions and violins. And in this remarkable still life, Texas’ yellow rose is gathered with an image of stoop labor—dreadful cotton (Flores says the pink carnation is a nod to Marty Robbins’s hit song from 1957). Work and play, the violin and the cotton sack, “I can’t separate them,” he says.

“La Labor” will be on view at Texas Folklife in Austin until Dec. 21 and then tours to Houston and Brownsville.