EQUINOX IN PORTLAND

I came to Portland for the Garden Writers Association Symposium, not knowing what to expect.The whirr of garden communicators---- photographers, editors, television and radio personalities, and, of course, writers is intoxicating, not just the afternoon port in my friends’ hotel room. It’s hard to pin point what makes this experience so exciting: the lectures? the tours? the plants? the people? I’ve met more new people than I’ve met in a long time. I’d have to say the people.
But with all the swirling symposiacs drifting and reconnecting through out the day there was one stable and marvelous star this weekend. The city of Portland itself. Lovely in it’s preservationist stance, graceful in it’s ease of negotiation, charming in it’s quirkiness. And a gardeners paradise...



One of the beautiful terra cotta buildings making downtown Portland worth a visit.




Exquisite Deco store front.




The architecture of the old city echos the yankee roots of the founders.




I took a break from the symposium to run to the art museum.




I found myself looking out the windows to get a break from the contemporay art collection. Too much together, a potluck gone wrong. Dyspepsia.

FLIGHTY DAYS

The last flighty days of summer have come. The moon, just past first quarter was haloed in red last night. The morning muffled in fog.
I wear shorts in a “last hurrah” defiance to the mornings damp chill, knowing n by mid-day it will be “hot”. But I also wear a a red and green tartan wool shirt, acknowledging the chill clinging to larger portions of the day. It is a beautiful inbetween-ness approaching equinox
It’s time to cut back the fallen and failed, under brilliant sapphire skies at mid-day..

PILGRIM IMAGES

Travel for me is always a pilgrimage, whether I travel to a true holy site, like the tomb of Kwaja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer, India or to an art museum. I try to make my travels reverent. Even the sunny beaches of Mexico are shrines to me, and worship a swim in the Caribbean. On my most recent trip to the East Coast, I visited gardens, schools, art museums, cemeteries, friends and retreat spaces. All with a desire in my heart for refreshment , renewal. Why else travel? I will be posting photos and thoughts from these travels over the next few days, back dated to reflect the actually days of travel. I saw many beautiful people and places was refreshed, feel renewed.

A PEACEFUL PLACE

This beautiful mausoleum, or dargah, houses the remains of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, the Sri Lankan sufi mystic who lived and taught in Philadelphia until 1986.

CHANTICLEER, IN TEARS

We cry for 2 reasons: sorrow and joy.
Chanticleer inspired both in me today. Joy at finally making it to this magnificent and innovative garden. And sorrow for having my camera battery run dry.
Still I managed a few photos, some inspired sitting. And a nap.




The serpentine: simplistic, symbolic and sublime.




These elegant chairs are more comfortable than they look.




The reflection trough in the ruin garden, slighty sinister.




Cannas in hanging baskets?




I napped here as if I were at home.

SEVEN PILLARS

The shakers are long gone from New lebanon, New York. But they did not leave ruins behind like many civilizations, but a spirit not only evidenced in the beauty of the simple buildings, but something tucked into the mountains giving way to the Hudson Valley on the western edge of the Berkshires. The wooded hills roll into the valley with an ancient unspeakable grace. I come to this place as often as possible for retreat and edification. The Abode of the Message, the home of the Sufi Order International,occupies some shaker buildings at the end of the road before it slips off into the woods and up the mountain.
this year the Abode was inaugurating a new House of Wisdom-- The Seven Pillars.
A conglomeration of intellectuals, holy men and women, seekers and artists gathered to explore the possibility of a new world vision where unification was not only a possibility but a reality. The inspiring speakers and seekers filled me with a hope I was hungry for. Not a political hope, but a human hope.
I have included a link to the right for those of you who are interested in reading and hearing more about this weekend. they will be posting videos and transcripts of the weekend starting in early October.



The Elders' Hall, now part of Darrow School where the Seven Pillars Inauguration was held.




The graceful shaker meeting hall at Darrow School.




The Abode herb garden and the building that houses the Seven Pillars offices.




The building where I slept and the native turtle head ( Chelone lyallii ) which grew out back.









The Abode pond, a good place to wait for dawn.

OUT OF FASHION

I stumble over my thoughts about why we garden.
What levels of horticultural perfection I saw at Longwood. Such painstaking preservation at Mt. Cuba Center. The humbling wonder of Bartram.
I wonder why each of us gardens. Obsessively fighting the elements and seducing them, though we are at their will. This search on-line, through nurseries, catalogues and magazines for the perfect plant, the ideal concept expressing our individual sense of “Garden”. Certainly it stems from our love of nature, of the elements. But I wonder, too, if there isn’t a tinge of “unfashionable” guilt behind it. Guilt for the “un-gardening” of the world, so we can have cheap shoes, faster travel,more exotic fruits in the middle of winter.
I’m all for global trade.
I don’t know what I’d do with out bananas and olive oil. Cheap shoes. My truck,which keeps me working as a gardener.
I’m starting to think that Meis van der Roeh was right, though.: “Less is more”.
Less cultivation allows for more appreciation. My restless spring days are behind me. Late summer presents time for relaxation. Contemplation.
Yes, and cultivation. I can’t imagine this time of year without the gaudiness of dahlias; that requires deadheading. Or October without pumpkins, or apples; that requires harvesting.
This is what vacation is for. To remember. To remember to slow down.
Why is someone else’s garden more Eden than our own?
Because toil is vanquished and appreciation and contemplation rush forward flooding us with a joy so deep as to be immeasurable?
These are just my thoughts in a agrden where I don’t garden. But they are thoughts I’d like to pay heed to. It seems a shame I had to fly to he other side of the continent to find them in Bartram’s Garden