Blog Excerpts
I began the Composer in the Garden blog in 2011 as a way of connecting my creative work in music with my love of gardening. The seasons of the garden and the movements of a piece explore color, texture, rhythm and emotion - writing about them has allowed me to explore all of those elements and to share them with others. Below are three short excerpts from my blog, just click on the plus sign to open them. There are links to the full post at the end of each excerpt.
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The last two months in the garden has been astonishing – after a long winter, the extended cool weather and plenty of rainfall has triggered healthy growth and abundant flowers. The garden changes before my eyes every day – sometimes slowly and sometimes suddenly - and I have finally began to capture that change with my camera.
It has been almost four months since my shoulder surgery in February. I was unable to walk through the garden for the first two months because of the danger of falling, so I could only observe it from the decks and open doorways. In those first few weeks after surgery, a loss of strength and mobility led me to walk more slowly and look at the garden more closely, noticing small changes and details that I might have missed otherwise.
These days, I am filled with a sense of joy and hope as I awaken each day, eager to reacquaint myself with the plants, the woods, and the creatures that make their home there. Read more here.
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We continue to have beautiful snowfalls followed by melt, thaw and freeze. On gray winter days, there is nothing more satisfying than gathering colorful pictures of the garden together to create a story. In one way, it is looking back at the previous year’s triumphs in the garden but in another, it is a way of tracing the exploration of an idea over a long period of time.
Even as I gradually transform the garden into a more pollinator friendly place, I will probably never let go of a few of those plants that inspired me to garden in the first place. I have removed hundreds of plants in my garden in the past three years – those that were invasive or did not serve the eco-system that I am trying to build – and added hundreds of others that contributed to life in the garden. But roses, daylilies, peonies, lilies, and others – many of which are interlopers in the North American landscape – still have their place in my heart and I’ve kept those I love the most and which do no harm. My garden behind the fence is still arranged by color and I continue to play in that most ephemeral of paintboxes. Read more here.
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. . . as we strolled through the rose arbor into the lower garden, Bill exclaimed "walking through the arbor, now I understand!" As I turned to him in puzzlement, he went on to say that he hadn't walked through the arbor into that part of the garden in a long time, having been content to admire it from the deck while playing his guitar.
Walking into the garden gave him a completely different perspective of what it meant to stand in the space and be enveloped by it. I was deeply moved by his reaction yet it confirmed what I've always believed about a garden - to truly experience it, you need to walk through it, not just look at it. Those of you who garden or who hike in nature surely know this difference.
My garden has developed its own sense of placeover the years - while I made the design decisions, tilled the soil, and filled it with plants, it was in partnership with nature. The garden and I evolved and grew together - I learned its many secrets, it responded to my care and now we are deeply intertwined in this long standing friendship.
This is where I've walked every day for the past 22 years, listening, paying attention, and finding delight. Joined in this quiet endeavor, our efforts have yielded both beauty and bounty in every season. Each time I step through an arbor, walk along a path, cradle a flower, or watch a spider weave an intricate web, I feel a part of the magic. Read more here.