Plants Make Me Ill (Revisiting Chronic Illness in the Garden)

With all of the recent changes it has been difficult for me to sit and think about being chronically ill. Mostly that's because it's what I thought about for so many years; the diagnosis robbed me of many things and it hurt deeply. Gardening kept me busy, but mostly I read about it. Actually being outside all of the time was another thing altogether and that became more and more difficult as I became more ill. But who out there amongst us isn't an armchair gardener at one point or another?

Now I am feeling better, so I don't have as much time to sit and think, but the avoidance is mostly due to my not wanting to accept or even acknowledge what I've seen as a roadblock and an obstacle for so long. So much of my current divorce has to do with the illness, but it is certainly not everything and I know that too.

Peony bloom I snapped from the sidewalk. 

Currently, when I don't have plans with friends on Friday nights, I take leisurely 6-mile walks to Powell's Books on Hawthorne and then I walk back home through Mt Tabor Park. These are productive walks where I not only get the much needed exercise I've missed for the last decade or so, but I also get to feel the joy I used to feel at just looking at things—mostly plants.

Rockery overflowing with Basket of Gold, Aurinia saxatilis.

During these walks I am in awe of how thrilling it is to be able to breathe and to walk. And although plants do still make me a bit ill—at least their pollen that is—I am learning how to better manage my asthma and to feel the symptoms in my body. For so long I was unable to do so because I'd become so numb from all of the swelling but I can feel a lot now. 

Walking past Portland Nursery still makes me giggle a little since it's no longer an escapist refuge for me as it once was when I could barely get anything done all day.

Seeing the cherry blossom petals scattered on the sidewalk while standing amongst them has made me smile with pleasure this year. They won't be here for long and this year I won't have to see them solely from the car as I fly past them. I savored them the other night because they'll be gone next week.

No one knows this yet but I have lived at the base of Mt Tabor Park for almost 8 years and it was only within the last few months that I've been able to visit all of its reservoirs.

False Solomon's Seal, Maianthemum racemosum.

Finding native plants in the park has been a great boon too.

Vine Maple, Acer circinatum.

Lastly, while up at the park, walking and thinking about chronic illness, I thought a lot about the native Vine Maple. It is so tiny among giants, stretching for the sunshine, doing its best as an understory resident. Thinking about how much I've always liked this tree, and how calm I've felt beneath them spring, summer, or fall, seeing them during my walk home in the woods of Mt. Tabor felt like coming across another old friend. 

Somehow this comforting end to my walk on Friday helped me to find the courage to do some research into what to call the current stage of my chronic illness experience. From inside, I have felt so much certainty about so many things but I haven't understood at all why. I have felt very isolated, but I just knew that if I looked hard enough I would find something—and I did!

Just as my disease is new and unknown, so too are the studies of people living as I do. We become chronically ill as adults, suffering for many years with uncertainty and change, there comes a moment when we face death, we get through it, and then with extra medical attention, we improve suddenly after something is changed or adjusted. We are the lucky ones. Many living with chronic illness will never get this opportunity and I think knowing this is part of the catalyst for what happens internally to some of us. I, like many others, have been rewarded with just the outcome we'd spent so much time trying to let go of so as not to create false hope within ourselves. We had to learn to live in that moment between enduring and suffering, committing to ourselves not to dream about being able to live in the reality I have just reentered—one with so much more freedom. 

One study said that there may only be 5-10% who experience what they called self-reformation, but I think that further study will show a higher number of people who enter into this process. Medical science seems to improve daily and there will be more people like me. There must be others out there already too who, like me, simply don't know what to call what they're going through. 

Here are the phases that have so far been identified, but I am putting them in my own order, as they occurred within myself: need for reciprocity (to help others who are suffering), value suffering, appreciate one's abilities, a disregard for material things, maximizing today, reordering priorities and exiting from unsatisfying relationships. 

This last one is the tricky one. It shows my part in the divorce, and I agree with what I read about other people in my situation. When I read the experience of one woman, I was shocked to see myself in her words. This list also points forward for me, and what I read also made me think so much about plants and gardening—funny how that always seems to happen. I am sure that many of you out there already understand this too in your own lives.

Plants might still make me a teeny tiny bit ill with allergy or an immune response but there is no way I am ever leaving the garden again. All roads seem to lead right back to plants in my life and that's just the way it's going to be...

Growth Takes Time—At Least for Me

I used to tell people jokingly that our house just happened to be in my garden. This is no longer a laughing matter though as I enter into that next phase of deciding what to do with my life and my belongings—even the green ones. 

Yes, divorce takes time. I see that now. It's not like I will wake up tomorrow and the instant nearly overnight beauty of the mature Japanese maple and some choice tulips will be what my life will look like. I think my current new growth will take some time. 

As I grow I will observe, and not judge. Like a gardener tending to a new plant, I will decide what kind of growing conditions are needed and I will watch and wait. If I need to be moved somewhere else to flourish, I will be moved. 

Recently, as I've been walking around Portland I've been thinking about the similarities and differences I have with plants, and the activity has been more informative than I'd imagined it would be and so much more positive than several of the alternatives...

The Laburnum tree that I grew from seed didn't take long at all before it started to put on its show.

I won't grow at that rate though and I am alright with that.

For those who know me you're bound to agree that I can be as tacky and as flashy as the hot pink Azaleas people are always trying to get rid of in the FREE section of Craigslist—at least they do this in the Portland area.

I am part Italian after all and I do love to be a bit over the top at times.

Then there is a lot about me that needs to be looked at closely to be examined and I have to examine it regularly myself. Sadly this does make me a bit of a ruminator, but just so long as my illness stays in remission and I can take that ruminating behavior to the streets, it's not at all the issue it can become when I am required to be physically inactive due to my health problems.   

I know this now and it is the teeny bit of green I'm currently proud to wear. (At least here I have seen growth—lots of it!) 

There are also those dainty girl moments which I've been having far more of recently. They don't need to be discussed here necessarily, but let's just say that my friend pampered me and she took me to have a mani/pedi in California and it was great fun for a change. I had no idea either that an eyebrow waxing could be as exciting as pruning a shrub but there you go. I learned something completely new!

Overall I do feel like the special plant, unusual, hard-to-find, maybe a bit damaged and bruised on the sale rack right now. I am that item most gardeners will pass up because I cost too much, or look a bit odd and my novelty may not come in the correct color for their garden. Ok, I might even need a bit of extra care and attention.

Looking at my illness this way has been a relief. Honestly it has been because I think all of what I just wrote is very true for many of us living with chronic illness.

Sometimes I burst open at the seams a bit and explode like my Clematis did while I was in California. That's ok too I think, and maybe it makes me more common, and less likely to be as delicate as I sometimes think that I am. 

Things I will never go without though as I change and grow will be my tall boots and my odd choice of hot pink luggage with polka dots. Life is too short to be dull and colorless.

This is at my core. These items will remain at my center. They are part of what identify me as who I am.

My humor is also at the center of who I am and remembering why I'm called Annie, and how much I love hearing it with an Irish brogue. This too is part of where I come from and I am proud to have known some very amazing Irish priests.

Lastly, to help me as I grow I will not miss out on my deepest and darkest of treats. There are many foods which I love, but my love of pommes frites with truffle oil, parmesan cheese, and squid ink aioli reaches such depths that I truly would be lost without them. 

So yes, it's an in between phase for me. I am growing but it is slow and as I do so I am noting what characteristics define me and where I am best suited in the design of things. In all seriousness, thinking like this has been far more beneficial than any book or online posting I've read about the divorce process. I guess I really do just see things through nature and plants, and yes, I really do still believe that the house just happens to be in my garden. 

I just don't know yet if I can grow here anymore.

Wordless Wednesday: My Last Walk Around San Carlos and Belmont (CA)

Filoli (Woodside, CA): Part I, Arrangements, Doors & Gates

Located in Woodside, CA the Filioli Estate was built between 1915-1917 by Willliam Bowers Bourn II and his wife Agnes Moody Bourn. The estate has a total of 654 acres, 16 of which are formal gardens. 

Filoli was first on my list of gardens to visit during this trip to California. 

Floral arrangement in Visitor's Center.

In the newly constructed visitor center I was stuck by this massive floral arrangement and noted that the materials used were garden materials instead of stark and showy exotics so I was thrilled when I discovered that the arrangements throughout the interiors were made with flowers from the cutting garden on the estate. 

When you enter the main house, you will see this orchid planter. It's massive size does nothing to dwarf the beauty of its contents.  

In another room nearby an arrangement is seen on a table with Delphinium and Dutch Iris (Iris x hollandica) from the garden. As a matter of fact, all of the rooms in the house had amazing arrangements in them—though the ikebana-inspired piece was truly my least favorite since it really disappointed me. 

Of coures there are a few houseplants too like this Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum)—a classic for any dark interior. 

A pair of Boston ferns (Nephrolenpis) on two of the largest plant stands I've ever seen. 

Out back, past the larger formal gardens you'll find the cutting garden. It's in two parts with one being protected, while the other is out in the open. 

Then there are the many garden doors and gateways at Filoli...

Hope you enjoyed the brief tour of these few pieces and parts.

Stay tuned for more...

Official Website: Filoli
Wikipedia: Filoli Estate

Hanging on the Peninsula (Oh, the plants!)

After my husband left, asking initially for a separation, and then weeks later for a divorce, I really have to admit now, that at that time, I wanted nothing more than to go away too but I really wasn't able to do so since when you live with a chronic illness, saving money is far from easy. 

I think the yellow bloom is an Acacia, but let me know if you can ID it. Its companions are some lovely Agave americana or century plants.

So just in case this kind of situation ever arises in your life, I suggest you stash money away for just this kind of thing. Then again, you're probably not at all like me, and you wouldn't have gotten yourself into this kind of mess in the first place.

I love this pine tree. Not sure which one it is but the needles are really long and beautiful.

So, as a present to myself I did eventually purchase a plane ticket to stay with my high school friend and her family down in California.

I think this is Oxalis valdiviensis. 

She recently lost her father, so in a sense we're mourning simultaneously, but in very different ways. 

Nice little planter with some kind of Aloe.

Being down in CA again, just south of San Francisco, has been relaxing and I'm glad I'm here. 

This is a planting in front of an apartment complex with possibly Aloe arborescens and some form of the common ice plant Delosperma cooperi. 

I have some big plans to visit some large gardens but today started off slowly and I just enjoyed a walk to and from the Trader Joe's. 

Here's some more of that amazing tangle of Aloe. 

Everything you're seeing here was shot with my lovely new iPhone as I walked the 1.7 miles to and from the store. I wore a sun hat (since I burned my face last week), and the sun on my arms felt so nice. 

I think this is a kangaroo apple hedge but I am not sure—Solanum laciniatum. Thoughts? (I mean other than, "Wow, that's in the deadly nightshade family and it's a hedge!)

Looking at such a lovely landscape did lift my worries a bit, and I cannot believe how much I enjoyed such a simple walk. (I guess I am still in awe of my body's ability to function again.) 

You know, this is part of the world where you can have your flowering cacti out on your patio. I know mine would love to life here too it only the could...

The walk helped me to think a lot, and to think about my blog, and where I was going with things and why I'm even here so often.

I really liked this gate.

I took this to text to my niece. She has a California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) tattoo. 

I like being here, and I like it when I am able to write more complicated posts about interesting topics and things. Something inside of me—namely mental and physical exhaustion—has been making those deep and meaningful posts impossible right now though and I'm hoping California will help me to recover.

Jade Tree hedge. Yes, the houseplant. Crassula ovata.

The first day seems to have gotten me off to a great start, and that's not bad considering I read a book about technical botanical terms on the plane. That stuff is dry and reading it during the flight was a huge hurdle for me to lurch over—but I did it. 

This Echium was part of a really pretty planting at a small office complex near downtown San Carlos.

Coming to terms with being such a highly sensitive person has not been easy for me, and if you know me, you probably know that I hide it well, and like many gardeners, I hide it there in the mass of plants best of all.

This quirky garden was hard to miss: Agave americana, Agapanthus, Canna.

You see, only recently I discovered that I absorb and learn so much more of what I know through my senses than through my mind. I am not as intellectual or as cerebral as even I'd thought and that's a relief because for years I was beginning to think that I was not smart at all. I simply didn't understand my skill set the way I do now. 

More of the quirky house. This place was great!

For so long I've wondered why as a child I did some pretty absent-minded things. Somehow I took drowning to new level, and it was as if I sought out the sensation over and over. I liked how if felt, but I knew nothing of the consequences—something about the panic thrilled me too.

Not sure I have ever seen a Dusty Miller (Jacobaea maritima) used as a hedge. This was a first and it was pretty fun. 

This has all come back to me as I feel that same feeling, but now in an impending divorce and failed relationship, that rush and thrill of near death and the dramatic panic that comes with it. Yes, it's like that rush any addict feels to help them to feel alive. 

You settle into the mess that you've somehow emotionally sought out—just for the pure experience of it. Sensation seeking doesn't have to be so self-destructive though, or so harmful to the individual. I just didn't know this—but you may have felt it before too.  

You're here looking at garden blogs and plant pictures so you must want to drown a bit too and sense something, desiring the plant, craving the climate maybe, absorbing a sensation deep inside of yourself that resonates and feels warmly and it's called beauty. 

It's dangerous. I know. But is is mostly safe, that's the good part, and if you want it to be unsafe, that's always an option too. Some of us walk the line of sobriety, but for others like myself, there are the other lines in this funny composition we call life. 

You can plant a Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia) here in your hell strip—no problem!

I've vowed to no longer drown, and to not seek out that sensation. My swimming lessons have not necessarily started yet, but I am drifting and treading water this time, and I keep telling myself how much I want to live. 

You can grow your own Citrus tree too. 

Yes, somehow my love of nature and plants figures into this, but it is an ephemeral thing, something I feel and it has very little to do with anything I know. 

This little pocket on the walk back still had its native trees intact. 

When it is around me, I feel it, and it feels good and I am happy. Much of what all of this is comes out of some kind of happiness inside of me, and from the comfortable place I seek, where I can sit calmly finally and rest. It's been years since I've been able to do so. When my body was very swollen and reactive I lost my compass and I was out of touch with the outside world. For years I was truly adrift. 

Probably one of the best under-tree plantings I've seen in awhile. 

People drift apart and so do plants. Sometimes plants grow too in places where they shouldn't be able to do so. I think the same goes for people.

Poor old Sequoia who had the burbs grow all around 'um.  

I'm not sure which succulent this is growing in the English ivy but it looked nice in bloom.

When I was a girl, I did not yet understand or appreciate that a woman must have a room of her own. Right now, I want nothing more than a garden room of my own. (If only Virginia Woolf had willed it so...)

This house really screams of springtime (left to right): Leptospermum, Wisteria, Blooming Cherry (Prunus) and a pink climbing rose (Rosa). 

These thoughts and many more floated in and out of my mind as I walked through the beautiful streets of San Carlos today. I tried to remember all of the many sensations I've felt from this area over the years, and I was reminded just how many times I've come here to this part of California to be healed of something in my life. Oddly enough, the most difficult transitions I've ever faced started here and that amazed me to remember today as I walked.

Hedge of Darwin Berberry, Berberis darwinii.

This has nothing to do with plants, but years ago my heart was healed with laugher while staying with another dear girlfriend from high school and we were laughing so hard we missed an earthquake. When we awoke from the hilarity, we notice the lights were all swinging. The sensation of that moment will last forever for me.

I don't think this is the place to grow an Azalea (Rhododendron). 

Whenever I walk, or work with plants, I do tend to feel a great deal, and now that I am no longer swollen, the sensations are far more real and tangible to me. To have been cut off from how I "see" things for so long made me blind in a way that we never speak of, in a way that few of us probably even understand.

Golden Clock Vine, Thunbergia gregorii.

I am a sensation seeker and I know how to spot others like myself. Often, we're the ones petting and pawing at plants as we walk past them. We need to not only see the textures, but we must touch them too. 

Where I hang my sun hat when I'm staying on the Peninsula. (Thank you SO MUCH friends for putting me up and for putting up with me.)

So my life is hanging on, as am I, and this will pass as did the other moments in my life when I needed to seek a kind of refuge here. I think that for the first time though it has become clear to me that this area—including the city of San Francisco—offers me the many sensations I seek, and this involves the pleasure of plants, as well as the many other beautiful things this little corner on the planet has to offer. 

Neighbor's beautiful Bougainvillea.

Thank you for taking this little walk with me.

PS: If you'd like to read the amazing post my hostess wrote to me on her blog about what I am going through, please check it out: Jess Out West: An Open Letter.

I have to admit that I really liked what she wrote and am honored and lucky to have her as a friend.