Plant Dreaming Deep by May Sarton

When I was a young girl I spent Saturday mornings wandering the aisles of Powell's Books in downtown Portland with my father Frank. Since my parents were very protective of their only daughter—and I was a good Catholic school girl—let's just say this activity persisted for many years.

One Saturday I happened upon a book with a title that really spoke to me. It was Journal of a Solitude and its author was the poet and memoirist May Sarton. At that time I was journaling a great deal, and of course I considered myself to be a solitude, so it seemed like a match made in heaven. I purchased it, read it, and I can say with certainty that it change my life by showing me more of who I was and who I could be. To this day, I still list it as being one of the most formative books of my early creative literary life. Considering how many books I've consumed over the years, this is quite a feat.

Imagine my surprise when just months ago I was reading some theoretical piece about garden literature and May Sarton's name popped up. Almost immediately I put on my walking shoes for the 4-mile roundtrip walk to the Powell's store on Hawthorne. It was there that I purchased this now precious book Plant Dreaming Deep.

It is a garden memoir of a place in time, a person and her life, and the town where she has come to live. As a poet, she writes patches that are striking and true. Readers at first do not know how to make sense of how the text works and fits together. These are the best books for my mind at least where there is a puzzle. We work to patch together the meaning of something so intimate, the thoughts and experiences of a stranger, and best of all, yes, there is a garden and many thoughts about what plants mean to her. More than anything, she bridges the divide that bothers me most about the majority of garden writing. She makes it personal. She is not hiding the fact that her ideas are opinions and her tastes are based on feelings and memories. She is an artist and she makes herself vulnerable. Gardening and garden design is not formulaic and it is not mimicry. I believe she would say that we have little control over our gardens at all and that for the time we have them, we should feel them at every available moment. They are gifts to us. At the garden's heart, like all great things, we will always find the subjects of life, death and change. It is for this reason we've spent so many years reflecting in gardens. It's just what humans do.

For Sarton—and for many of us gardeners like her—it's our heart and our minds we find when we garden. It is our spirit we grow and truly our souls we nourish as we tend to the soil. Not all gardeners fall into this group though, but if you do, and you're like me, I really recommend the work of Sarton.

Handmade Garden Projects

Last week my 20-year-old niece came over to visit me in the garden and as soon as she arrived I put down my review copy of Handmade Garden Projects. She immediately grabbed it though and after a few minutes of flipping thorough it blurted, "Wow Annie, these are really cool projects! I want to make something now. Like right now!"

And this is exactly how Handmade Garden Projects will make you feel too. Yes, there are instructions for the different projects, but there are also extra tidbits that will help with your overall funky garden design. Somehow, between the pages, the book gives off the creative energy of its author and creator too—Lorene Edwards Forkner. We could all use a little bit of personality sometimes and I think many gardening books lack it. This is not one of those books. 

Like others, I too had the pleasure to see Lorene's garden during the Seattle Garden Blogger's Fling in 2011. It was absolutely a high point during the trip. I too like to repurpose and recycle old things in the garden and I love how it continually changes how I see things. I am often in awe of those like Loree who are able to push the simplest and sometimes most inelegant of objects into things of beauty. It truly is an art to understand how to place found objects. 

There is nothing quite like the chance encounter in a garden for the viewer. So often it's where we've come to expect the expected. When we don't find it—at least for me—it can be exhilarating. Just when you become blasé about something like this, it often takes the talent of someone like Lorene to open up your eyes all over again.  

Here are just a few of the projects included in the book that I captured during that tour. Have a look through and at the end of this post simply leave a comment to win your very own copy of Handmade Garden Projects! (Deadline Friday May 25th at noon PST.)

AND THE WINNER IS: RYAN MILLER!! CONGRATS AND YOUR COPY OF THE BOOK WILL BE IN THE MAIL SOON.

Welded Gabion Column (Lorene Edwards Forkner). 

Outdoor Terrarium (Lorene Edwards Forkner). 

Cocktail Table. (Lorene Edwards Forkner). 

Wire Plant Support (Lorene Edwards Forkner).

Shutter Storage Space (Lorene Edwards Forkner).

Bamboo Obelisk (Lorene Edwards Forkner). 

Old World Water Fountain (Lorene Edwards Forkner).

Sleek Succulent Gutter (Lorene Edwards Forkner).

There were so many amazing things I had to leave a few more funky pictures.

So please don't forget to leave a comment to win your very own copy of Handmade Garden Projects.

Here is your prompt: Have you repurposed or recycled something in your garden that you're really proud of or do you have plans to do so this summer? Let us all know and good luck! (Deadline Friday May 25th at noon PST.)

Vita Sackville-West on the Humble or Sensitive Plant

Last night I couldn't sleep so I grabbed a book from the bedside bookcase. I've been reading Sackville-West's In Your Garden Again off and on for the past few weeks and it has all kinds of things I always mean to mention here but, by the time I've finally fallen asleep and come to in the morning—I've totally forgotten whatever it was I was thinking about sharing!

The sections of the book are divided into the twelve months of the year and are filled with articles she contributed to Sunday editions of The Observer between February 18, 1951 to March 8, 1953.

When I read this last night I knew I had to share this on my blog. As a foster parent who works in the garden with kids, this cracked me up and I hope you enjoy it too:

February 17, 1952
       Amongst other seeds for spring sowing I order a sixpenny packet of Mimosa pudica, the Humble Plant.... So humble is the Humble Plant, so bashful, that a mere touch of the finger or a puff of breath blown across it will cause it to collapse instantly into a woebegone heap.... One grows it purely for the purpose of amusing the children. The normal child, if not an insufferable prig, thoroughly enjoys being unkind to something; so here is a harmless outlet for this instinct in the human young. Shrieks of delight are evoked, enhanced by the sadistic pleasure of doing it over and over again. 'Let's go back and see if it has sat up yet.' It probably has, for it seems to be endowed with endless patience under such mischievous persecution.

Vita Sackville-West,  In Your Garden Again

Vita Sackville-West, by William Strang

Why I ♥ My Garden Journal (Made by Attic Journals)

This is not my first garden journal/notebook, nor is it my only garden journal, but currently, it's the most special garden journal in my collection. If you need a journal, or if you'd like to give one as a gift this holiday season, I highly recommend those made by  Attic Journals.

I know for a fact that it was made with a lot of love. That's because I know the folks who made it.

They are a local (and extremely hard-working) Portland, OR company who inspire everyone they meet. I know I was inspired and I 'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

My garden journal has fulfilled all of the requirements I have for an ideal garden journal. 

It has been used as a sketchbook and as a place for me to write garden quotes.

There are collages I've pasted onto its pages with ideas I've liked from gardening magazines.

It also has inspirational art I've collected for ideas, and design shapes for things I might make in the future, or, for things I will make in the future.

The journal is full of lists too, but I didn't want to bore you with images of those. (I don't have the handwriting of an architect if you catch my drift.)

And why, oh why, do I just adore my journal  * * *  t  h  i  s     m  u  c  h  * * *?

Well, it might have something to do with the fact that my Etsy shops would never have been created if I hadn't had a chance encounter with Attic Journals back when I was looking for someone to walk with from time to time in the neighborhood.

Every time I touch this journal, dreaming my dreams of creation and artistry, I remember those days before Milton's Garden Menagerie and I know that I will never go back.

Now I want everyone out there to feel as good as I do, and to have their own journal to flip through, to fill with their own hopes, dreams, tasks and designs. You too can forge your own future, and never have to go back, not unless you want to, but it all begins with a recycled vintage book journal—followed by a few blank pages.

O Pioneers! Onward!