Garden Variety
Is it a sign of one's impending dotage or is it the absolute verification of a full blown, now officially in advance stages dotage to keep a garden journal? I've kept a life journal since I was age nine with never more than a three week gap in entries. There are also travel journ
als, gym journals, house journals, spiritual journals, and journals on...oh, I'll just let you use your imagination. I swear, I am truly carrying the torch of Brigid Berlin.One of my exes, a Jewish-Italian American from Connecticut who always said I reminded him of the people from the other side of Connecticut, once remarked that the garden journal was actually the quirk that he found most endearing about me. He kept cooking and entertaining journals. The fact that he was one of a still to be disclosed number of ex-beaus of Jewish-Italian heritage from the states of Connecticut and New Jersey that are a concurrent theme in my life should, perhaps, inspire me to keep a journal on that topic. But, believe me, I've written and typed endless pages on those boys in the other journals.
Regardless, I've had a few recent nudges asking me to post shots from the aforementioned journal. While not spectacular, at least they show my nifty birdbath and those rose rocks in the background of the iron lantern that come from the famed Lazy Acres estate. How many of you have rose rocks in your garden?
Labels: Connecticut, dating, exes, gardening, journals, Lazy Acres, New Jersey
posted by Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) @ 2:30 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Hey, what ever floats your boat... and floats it right into your impending or current dotage.
You are like a friend of mine who keeps various records of things (though hers are nothing like what I would call actual journals). A journal since you were nine without more than a three-week break!? Dang, that's mighty impressive... (if you're impressed by that kind of thing! Ha.)
Personally, I'd like to burn all her neatly kept records. She's been tracking her gas mileage and date of tank refill on little pads of paper for years now. The woman has cancelled checks circa 1971 and forward.
While I wish I had more of an archive of my life (something that a personage such as I can bequeath to a university archives after I pass, right?), that kind of habit sort of makes me twitch. Like I said, whatever floats your boat -- it's kind of charming I suppose.
Tell me exactly what one records in a garden journal? Maybe it would be useful since I can't remember the date that I last fertilized my posies.
Joe - Thanks for confirming my dotage. I needed that. Well, now that I'm confiding to you in private (ha, indeed), I can share that I actually keep parallel garden journals. One is actually sort of a garden plan, a concept that I picked up from a work trip to Sumba, Indonesia, where illiterate farmers were making visual time maps of their farm plots. It is a nice reference tool for things like fertilizing, mulch, bulb planting, etc. The other one is more personal, "poetic" and reflective. I find the photos helpful, and a lot of living things in the garden have a significance connected to personal milestones, losses, transitions and the like.
Okay, I'm sure all that information made your day.
Actually, that sounds nice. And a lot more interesting that my friend's historical records of when she last waxed her car.
I may need to take some pictures of my own garden and post them.
Joe - A waxing journal? Oh gosh, now you've put that idea in my head.
Yes, please post your garden photos!
Hello from Mouse Medicine Kim and the trustees here at Ched U. Thinking of you--will stop back soon. xxx
Mouse and other scholars - I hope things are going well at Camp Granada. "Hello Muddha, Hello Junk Thief..."
That last photo really looked like you'd made a cardboard cut-out of yourself, and arranged your journal on a table in front of it. Probably the vagaries of digital photography.
I'm all for archiving. Too much, many would say...But they tend to be the same people who are so happy later on that someone was taking pictures, someone was writing down the quotable quotes...Someone saved that promotional Fiona Apple to-go paper coffee cup...
Rich - Yes, I do look a bit cardboard in that shot. How did I miss that Fiona Apple cup?
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