Quote of the Day (Poet Denise Levertov, With Thoughts in a Garden)

“In a garden grene whenas I lay—

you set the words to a tune so plaintive
it plucks its way through my life as through a wood.

As through a wood, shadows and light between birches,
gliding a moment in open glades, hidden by thickets of holly
your life winds in me.” — British-born American poet and Roman Catholic convert Denise Levertov (1923-1997), “Olga Poems,” in The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, edited by Paul A. Lacey and Anne Dewey (2013)

Photo of the Day: Julia Gabriel People’s Garden, Morningside Heights, NYC

Late this past summer, after meeting for lunch old friends from Columbia University, I walked around the Morningside Heights neighborhood and came across this small garden at the intersection of West 111^th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

(With temperatures dropping in the Northeast these last few days, I experience vicarious warmth just looking at this picture I took then.)

The volunteer-run Julia Gabriel People’s Garden is named for an area resident who saved the garden and its adjacent apartment buildings in the 1960s and 1970s—a victory over redevelopment by no means assured in that era.

Quote of the Day (William Dean Howells, on November)

“How often, in how many a far November,
Of childhood and my children's childhood I was glad,
With the wild rapture of the Fall,
Of all the beauty, and of all
The ruin, now so intolerably sad.”—American man of letters William Dean Howells (1837-1920), “November,” originally printed in Stops of Various Quills (1895), republished in American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 2: Herman Melville to Stickney, American Indian Poetry, Folk Songs and Spirituals, edited by John Hollander (1993)

I took the image accompanying this post, of the Smithsonian Butterfield Habitat Garden, outside the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, when I was on vacation in Washington, DC, nine years ago this month.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (George Herbert, on Writing, Gardens and God)

“And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
            I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O, my onely Light,
                        It cannot be
                        That I am he
            On whom Thy tempests fell all night.
 
            These are Thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flow’rs that glide;
            Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide.
                        Who would be more,
                        Swelling through store,
            Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.” —English poet and Anglican minister George Herbert (1593-1633), “The Flower,” in The Poems of George Herbert, edited by Ernest Rhys (1885)

Photo of the Day: Garden at Edith Wharton’s Estate, Lenox, MA

On other occasions, I have blogged about Edith Wharton and the Berkshire summer residence in which she lived at the start of the 20^th century, The Mount. But a word—and this photo, which I took on an August 2017 visit—about the gardens at her estate might be appropriate.

Much like her home, Wharton conceived of her gardens as being harmonious and perfectly proportioned. She was a woman with very decided ideas of what she wanted, and she designed herself the formal gardens on the south and east of her home, based on her study of European landscape design. She was assisted in this effort by her niece, Beatrix Jones Farrand, who, by the time of her death in 1959 had established herself at the forefront of American landscape architecture.

Photo of the Day: Reading Garden, Leonia Public Library, NJ

This past weekend, while driving around, I decided to stop at the Leonia Public Library, a mile or so from where I live in Bergen County, NJ. It was a spontaneous act that, like many of this kind, proved ill-advised, as the library’s procedures for opening and checking out materials had changed during the COVID-19 outbreak, so it was not open.

But my trip did not prove a total loss. Sometimes, in the noise and haste of my life, I haven’t stopped to observe my surroundings intently. That certainly holds true over several institutions I love—libraries—since I usually go to them having selected in advance which item I want and I try to limit browsing.

But on this day, I could not go inside. Despite having visited the library a dozen times before over the last decade, I had never noticed this reading garden. I immediately whipped out my iPhone and took this photo.

Reading gardens may not always work in densely populated cities where space is at a premium, but they are welcome amenities in the suburbs. What could be more pleasant than sitting out in the fresh air on a sunny day with a good book?

Photo of the Day: Pond Garden, Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA

I took this photo three years ago, as part of a visit to Berkshire Botanical Garden, a 24-acre site even more picturesque than the town in which it’s located: Stockbridge, MA.

This man-made pond with a waterproof liner sustains all kinds of life: frogs, toads, dragonflies, salamanders, and water beetles. But, for anyone not particularly interested in observing these creatures at close range, the pond garden is simply a good spot to catch one’s breath amid the noise and haste of the world.

Photo of the Day: Wetlands Garden, Shakespeare and Company, Lenox, MA

It may be hard to realize, with all those characters—and, yes, in the tragedies, corpses—all over the place, but Shakespeare’s plays are filled with imagery related to gardens. The Berkshire (Mass.) theatrical troupe Shakespeare and Company has invoked that beautifully with the Dorothy and Stephen Wetlands Garden, which I photographed when I attended several plays there in late August 2017.

I wish more people had the opportunity to encounter the plays staged there—and this lovely natural setting—as I did. But, of course, COVID-19 has changed everything, forcing the cancellation of this Lenox mainstay’s 2020 season.

Photo of the Day: Carnahan Garden, Chautauqua Institution, NY

Over the last 25 years, I have frequently vacationed at the Chautauqua Institution, a National Historic Landmark in southwestern New York. This year, with its traditional summer program of lectures, the arts, and entertainment relegated to the virtual sphere, I have chosen not to visit. 

I find myself missing it already, not just for these programs, but also for the quiet beauty of the grounds. Carnahan Garden, just off the amphitheater that serves as the heart of the community, is an example of this serenity. 

I took this photograph of the garden last summer. For nearly a half century, it has more than fulfilled its purpose of providing “quiet enjoyment” to Chautauquans eager to escape the noise and haste of the world.

Photo of the Day: Italian Garden, The Mount, Lenox MA

Over the last three decades, I have visited the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts on several occasions. On each vacation, I stop at The Mount, the turn-of-the-century country home of novelist Edith Wharton. Each time, I find something new to appreciate. 

Sometimes it’s because of the different perspectives of the various guides to the home. Sometimes, as part of the ongoing restoration of the place, it’s because some new facet of this pioneering female fiction writer has been discovered.
 

But it’s hard to get away from the beauty of the whole place, created under the watchful, demanding eye of Ms. Wharton. The architecture of the building itself if a marvel of symmetry and sleight-of-hand.

But outside, in the back, the gardens convey their own magic. Indeed, Wharton herself saw them as a series of outdoor rooms, designed to harmonize with the house itself.

The novelist’s niece, Beatrix Jones Farrand, a self-styled "landscape gardener," signed up to make the property harmonize with her aunt’s vision of what a natural backdrop should be. In this, she admirably succeeded.

Photo of the Day: Monkswood, Hancock Shaker Village, MA

Monkswood, an herbaceous wildflowers, grows in mountain meadows in the Northern Hemisphere. Growing 2 to 4 feet tall and 1 to 2 feet wide, it sends up purple-blue flowers like this in late summer or early fall.

Come to think of it, that’s when I saw and photographed this particular plant—in late August 2017, to be exact, at Hancock Shaker Village in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. 

This former experiment in communal living, established in 1790 and active until 1960, now functions as a living history museum of this fascinating sect. Though buildings cover much of the grounds, this remains a working farm, with vegetables, herbs and a barn full of livestock. A visitor can spend much of the day here, and it would be time well-spent.