Pot Party

Here we are in the throes of summer with not much relief in sight. With temperatures regularly in the nineties here in Atlanta, I tend to look wistfully at even overcast skies. Occasionally even a little bit of rain comes. It certainly gives more meaning to the food term 'fired green tomatoes' because I'm beginning to wonder if our tomato plants in numerous pots are going to make.

And speaking of pots : we are having a Pot Party at the ol' home base here in Grant Park, in Hotlanta. I've become interested in hypertufa and its sculptural possibilities so Ive started this series of pots I call The Tectonic Series since they look like the results of natural earth activity...well, some more than others and others less so. I have to say that I like them and I like making them. They seem to have acquired a zen-like quality wherein the process gets a slight shove from the conscious/unconscious pot-maker and the we are off and running, much like the throwing of more traditional ceramic or clay pots I'm supposing. There is alos a pleasing discordance between  the almost-formless (or form coming into being) pots and and the, at first glance, rather severe rigidity of the background structure. (I say, 'at first glance' because form is not always what it seems...as of course is true of 'formlessness' also.

The background structure came into existence in a likewise manner (even though it smacks of the Dwell mag design ethos): someone donated a large amount of heterogeneous material -- planks, plywood, etc -- and they 'naturally' fell into an order as I was rummaging around in them and they sort of fell together. It feels like a sketch for a studio shed rather than the real thing, maybe because it has no roof yet. Instead of a 'Potempkin Village' it's more like a Potempkin Shed: all frontage an no insides.  (what some have said of modernity in general--but that's for another blog).

another view:

The stainless steel rods I have from a previous incarnation...can't quite say why but the form didn't work right until the rods...as well as the rock held in suspension.

Ar any rate you are invited to the popt party and hopefully you will feel an unconscious urge to purchase one. I say also that you can always add a chin strop to them and use them to ward off a terrorist attack.

From Here To Eternity

Eternity has gotten a lot of bad rap of late. All of our intelligencia are all about imminence, the things that are right in front of us. (Perhaps a better title would be 'From Eternity to Here'! Anyway, it would have messed up one heck of a movie, theone with Burt Lancaster, Montgoery Clift and Deborah Kerr from 1941.) I guess lots of folks are tired/fed up/ frightened of things having to do with the 'Beyond' (but damn, I do love that old series 'One Step Beyond') ....I guess all the screwed up killings in religion's name(s) have pretty much put the kibosh on transcendence.

Well, maybe, maybe not. It may turn out to be a concept we can't do without. It's not too big artistically maybe but I hereby resurrect it for this new project for Ms. Alembik.  It's a firepit/patio on the top of a hill which I think of somewhat as a 'stargate', a portal to an outdoor nighttime experience (based in very archaic ritual) of fire and stars. Some would say that we are now beyond the archaic and now live only in the age of stars or the space age. I would disagree, nodding to William Faulkner who said something to the effect that the past is not dead it's not even past. We carry within the seeds of a cast of billions over periods of millions of years. True, we can only see the fruit of that Right Now but that hardly means anything in the vast scheme of things, the scheme of things in which fire, stars and that 'vast vegetative wave' I keep writing about, exists and has an existence outside the human kingdom.

The very fact of something existing outside human control is an incredible irritant to human sensibility to which the whole of the development of modernity attests.Rather than using techniques that work with the embedded nature of life in the universe, the developed sensibility of worldwide modernity seems to be one of a conquering army, of severing sensibility from its roots and transferring it wholesale into a machine form of existence, best exemplified by the Fordist means of production via the assembly line, even extended to life itself. And so it makes perfect sense that our design and architecture reflects that right-angled existence you might say, one devoted first and foremost to ease of mass factory production.

I see many pretty designs based on a modernist 'cleaning up' of the unruliness of the garden. All you have to do is check any contemporary landscape mag or many of the garden mags and you'll seee designs predicated on machine modernism. It's easy to see why: they good in sketches and CAD blueprints and they fit in with the machine esthetic of the 'Dwell' (as in the design mag) look.

Many people adore the work of Antonio Gaudi and the organoform shapes he developed but truth to tell its very difficult to achieve anything like that anymore at least on the scale at which Gaudi worked. The economics seem to prohibit it; the bottom line quarterly profit report of corporations prohibit such large scale craftsmanly (and hecne lets face it, idiosyncratic) handwork, Afterall, the Sagrada Familia is still unfinished and the finishing architect has subtly but distinctively turned the finishing into a sort of modernist streamlining (albeit with Gothic overtones) and virtually eliminating the vegetative flourishes (which aren't actually flourishes but at the heart of Gaudi's work; see here for a recent overview of this controversy).

(Here you see the added front of the Sagrada Familia)

Well, I could go on but there is plenty of material elsewhere on Gaudi and his way of working, one totally at odds with modernity by and large. The advent of the computer has changed, paradoxically at first glance, this situation somewhat if you look at the work of Greg Lynne and Frank Gehry who inhabit a terrain of intuitive 'sculpturization' of forms that only the computer can make possible. Needless to say, these forms are still firmly within a modernist esthetic of production. If one is looking for a more seamless integration of form and labor that favors a human scale, these are not the places to look perhaps.

And so we are led back to the garden again, a place where architects go to create their 'follies' as such structures are called, somewhat deprecatingly. One could just as well call many of the modern forms of architecture follies but somehow the connection with the garden betrays a subtle devaluing of worth.

On the other end of the scale, we have the film Avatar where the metaphysics of the garden reaches surreal heights (again, we might add, by courtesy of the computer). This perhaps puts us at the heart of the problem, not removing us (except in the way that all art removes us to a different place. Hopefully.)

 It may be that the tomatoes in pots outside our back door offer just as much food for thought.

Garden Tour!

Well, we've been sorta slack about working on the blog...but got some projects underway!
Come out to the tour and we can talk about them.
see you on Sunday!
google map:
3366 woodview drive
smyrna ga 30082

Dance the Plant Fantastic: Plants I NEED to grow

For many, there is nothing more pleasurable than the anticipation of spring.  For some it only means easier access to the mall, less snow, more touch football, or using the grill or getting ready to veg out (interesting term there since vegetables are always on the move--however slowly!) or other ways to escape from job. family, or whatever. For these folks gardening is nothing but more toil, another job. We're not addressing those folks and in fact they probably aren't even reading this blog.

No, we're thinking of those people who pour over gardening catalogs all winter, fantasizing about the next step in their garden, looking with wonder at what plants are available. (I can remember not too many years ago when perennials were just not that available in the Atlanta market, were considered exotics almost, or something that a relative passed along; I can even remember when Hastings, then located over off of Cheshire Bridge, has a couple of small tables of perennials and had mostly annuals [this was the same Hastings' Seed and Feed that my grandfather -- see the previous post -- would order from for his farm some sixty or more years ago.])

I have to say -- as you may have gathered by now -- that I am one of those maniacs who adores plants with great 'will power,' that is, the bigger the better especially if it can grow 12 feet in one season, or if it can take over a whole corner of the garden, or best of all, it is both huge AND odd looking. Some would say this is a character flaw, even a form of escapism from the invisibility (and some tedium let's admit) of nativistic plant life. But as one who admits of an artistic temperament, I have to say that this admiration of plants with outsized ambition and forceful revelation of its 'inner self' does reveal something of my artistic Leo temperament. Luckily there is no law against that yet. (By the way, without going into the whole thing, I found an interesting PDF of a book called Invasion Biology which I am going to pass along to you here. Be warned though that it is a 10 meg download which will commence when you click on the link. The question of exotics and 'invasions' is a very fraught question which scientists are examining -- this is an academic sort of book by the way -- questions which have ideological components as well no doubt. I only go into this now because many of the plants I am so fascinated with tend not to be 'from around here'; I suppose if one were ruthless enough one could enlist the psycho-analytic crowd to parse the apple but I think I'd rather just eat it.)

Ar any rate, herewith a few of these plants which I have lived with in my imagination for many years. Perhaps at some point they will make it into the ground.

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The marvelous plant at the top of the page is Puya chilensis, a native of Peru. I just came across this bodacious version recently by way of the wonderful Annie's Annuals in California. A member of the Bromeliad family, it's flower stalks grow 7-12 feet tall and a basal rosette up to FIFTEEN FEET ! across! The catch is, it takes 10 to 15 years to bloom. I'll call you over when it happens. Maybe I'll try to grow the Blue Puya as well! (yes indeed, sort of a metallic, teal blue!)

And while I'm over at Annie's there are a couple of other plants that I've dreamed about, namely a couple of Echiums:

 

This one is a California native, E. Fastuosum but there is another more spectacular one:

  

Jeez, it's like sci-fi ville....or Fantasia. These like sorta dry conditions and would parobably need to coddled a lot that is, taken in and out of a warm area. Hmmm, an 8 ft tall flower stalk -- COULD be a problem there -- although I can't say that's ever held me back. These versions hail from the Canary Islands.

I've lusted after Gunnera Manicata ever since I first saw it in English gardening magazines. The sheer size of it is mind-boggling...makes me feel like a character in a Leprechaun. movie Unfortunately these plants seem to need much cooler temps than we can provide in our southern summers. I know because I killed it twice...figure I've got one last chance.

 

 And just one more for now. I'm a sucker for all vines but Lapageria Rosea, the state flower of Peru apparently has s sort of mystical allure for me, along with some other vines which I'll discuss in the next post.I'm sure this one requires special care too, can't just plant it in the ground and run off; probably a lot of hauling back and forth. I found this one at the Potato Rock Nursery in California (incredible catalog of OTHER plants also):

 

to be continued.....

Returns

I love the picture above for several reasons. The first, but glancing reason is that it reminds me of that old photograph/poster that I've seen several times, I believe called 'Dream' (I've tried to find a pic on the net but unsuccessfully), a black and white photo of an old car beside the road; I believe the road sign had 'Dream' on it).

The second and most pertinent reason is that it's the gate of my grandparent Taylor's old seventy acre farmstead in Mississippi. For the entire time I was growing up in the small town, the road you see was a county maintained gravel road. Through the fence (which was put up after the farmhouse had basically collapsed and the road was used for dumping trash) was a small one lane dirt road, proceeding down a hill and over a small creek, a trickle most of the time but during rainy seasons all-but impassable -- and often we had to leave the family car up on the road. Finally, heading slightly back up out of the hollow,  and about a half mile in, it would wind up to the small unpainted country farmhouse.

It was a hard life they lived, at least as it seems from our perspective now: a cistern beside the house with a windy series of culverts from the roof directing water to it (I remember leaning over the stone parapet, which I could barely reach, and gazing into the dark, seemingly fathomless well) and a hand pump in the kitchen; the outdoor toilet, always an olfactory adventure; and the single line of electricity powering the mournful  radio up in the corner, and a couple of light bulbs, bare, here and there, but mostly using kerosene lanterns.  To live in  such a way was not all that unusual but now, even in recounting it, seems like another world --which it was in a way. They were almost entirely self-sufficient, cobbling together whatever needed to be repaired (no ipods, islates, pcs!) in the blacksmith shop out back. It wasn't Snuffy Smith but for kids now it would be I suppose: raggedy, a little ramshackle, it's own distinct odor of earth, chickens, sweat, and all the other emanations that comes from hard work, sunup to sundown. But you have to say that it was an environment that was all-of-a-piece, very little room for what they would perhaps have seen as a self indulgent alienation.  But the vegetables were fresh, most likely picked that day, as were the eggs and the chicken Sunday dinner, often inviting the minister (or rather: preacher). It was quite something to see my grandmother grab a chicken with a long pole with a hok onthe end, drag it in like a weird beached fishchicken and at the end of the drag, wring it's neck, have it on  the chopping block with its head off in just a few sesconds.

With the ideals of modernity -- basically a product of and reflection of the city -- everyone couldn't wait to move away, break the perennial cycle which land plus weather plus a shovel and plow give you...satisfying in many ways -- there's nothing like sitting on the porch at sundown on a late spring or summer day, hearing nothing but the faint tinkle of a cow's bell and then Bobwhites and Whipporwhills as the evening chill would come on and the fireflies came out.

Most  folks now prefer the exciting tension of waiting in traffic, or the nightly homicide reports, or perhasp the mind numbing sameness and push of an image-intensive culture, apparently trying to remake us into something that doesn't exist. (And let's face it, county life can be intensely conservative and stultifying to many who have gone through the image training of modernism -- which is basically everyone now).

How pitiful that small remnant that's left for us, the 'garden'.....necessary perhaps but  certainly not sufficient, a mere vestige, a ghostly revenant of that vast, slow vegetative wave from which we emerged and make every attempt to eradicate even as we suffer the by-now predictable occasional bouts of food poisoning from a highly mechanized and centralized food producing machine.
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Well, I fear I've nattered on too long about all this but it is a somewhat depressing and scary time in America right now. After seeing FOOD INC. it is apparent that the woeful state of the 'Garden', in its most gneralized form is at the heart of much of the disorder which surrounds us.

A recent passage from blogger James Kuntsler puts the fork in the road ahead (how far? Can things possibly go on as they've been?) thusly in his most recent blog:

"We can't maintain our way of life at its current scale and we have to severely rearrange and rebuild the infrastructure of it if we expect to continue being civilized. We have to get the hell out of suburbia, shrink our hypertrophic metroplexes, re-activate our small towns and small cities, reorganize the way we grow our food, phase out the big box retail (and phase in the rehabilitated Main Streets), start making some of our own household goods, and hook up the far-flung reaches of this continental nation with a public transit system probably in the form of railroads."

I don't know. To try to proceed on as we always have is almost always -- except under periods of extreme crisis and threatened deprivation of many kinds both civic and physical needs -- what we most fervently wish to happen. We seem to love the purgatory that cities have held for many people and the breath of 'breathing the air of freedom' and opportunity that the city has always promised. But maybe some compromise with the contryside and technology is possible now, given the nature of theelectronic soup we now live in.

But one thing is for sure: in some form the garden, writ large or small, would be at the heart of it all -- at least until they day they can devise a gene that will allow us to photosynthesize food from our skin.

But don't hold your breath...apparently, 'the economy' has the potential of trumping everything, even common sense. Which is turning out not to be as common as we once thought I suppose.

A Winter's Garden

Here is a post I started a while ago and never finished; however, given today's below freezing temps and Southern ground clad with snow any garden planning feels like time wasted... naw, just kiddin' folks.

-Atlanta's gardeners are particularly fortunate for the winter holiday season provides a time to not only deck the halls in the home and prepare family recipes, casseroles made from the past garden season's bounty, but also here in the deep South, Autumn and Winter are seasons filled tasks to enjoy in the garden.  There's just enough decay for one to see the garden with a clean slate; however, our mild climate, soft ground, unfrozen with merely a thin Jack Frost veil upon the green, and with the neighbor's Rooster I wake, pull back the drape and admire Mother Nature's son's crystals that shimmer in the Atlanta sunrise only to melt away in time for a day's digging, rearranging and late bulb planting (fingers crossed).  An Atlantan may still plant cut-burlap into (spent weekend) dug hole or shrub to block off the an undesirable view; even the perennials left over from the remnants of the nursery sales can be 'stuck' in the ground last minute (again, fingers crossed). Perhaps the best part of Winter for gardeners everywhere is the time it provides for perusing the seed and plant catalogs; the colder months leave time for mental drifting in to a day's dream, sketching Spring gardens in one's mind. I do this last bit quite a lot. I think it's left over from memories of childrens books with illustrations of peach, rose and lavender colored botanical. Another childhood memory exists of making a snow angel in the Atlanta's pitiful dusting and after you make the angel, I stand up only to see bright green grass angel in stead of the white icy ones the children up North see.

 

 

Patience

[The incredible microphotograph above is of the seed lamourouxia viscosa, a tropical plant, a plant I know nothing about but nevertheless a surreal seed worth knowing (or at least viewing)]

Another word for gardener should surely be something like 'patiencer' or patient one.  The winter season cerrtainly can try the soul of the most patient gardener.  In fact THIS patient gardener has taken to hanign plants up in the bath shower (I even put up a special holder in the ceiling). But of course I have put no seeds up in the bathroom garden -- though perhaps I should -- and any true gardener will tell you that the true measure of a gardener is his/her devotion to the lowly seed and the possibiities therein.  It is true that gardening centers carry seeds but for the most part they are teh same ones which we canfind later on at the same gardening center as lush, fully grown plants, ready to bear their fruit or flower. True, seeds are cheaper, you get more plants -- but you also need special condiitions if you've got the plant jones inthe middle of the winter' lighting, heat, room, etc (I remember one year I ordered seeds for a now-forgotten plant and the seed packet must have held  a hundred seeds; well, not wanting to waste any thing I planted all of them and in a half-heated garage to boot. Chaos ensued.)

So one thing I have learned over the years from the plants is that it helps to know one's limitations. I gae wistfully, and even mark-up, the winter release of the Thomson-Morgan catalog along with others but I seldom order anything anymore. Lack of proper conditions trumps patience every time these days...Or maybe that's the wrong way to look at it. Maybe I'm simply uber-patient, biding my time until I can grow properly that Echium wildpretii or that Strongylodon macrobotrys, or Gunnera manicata (actually I think given up on this one--I've killed it twice already; conditions just aren't right here in the southeast, not cool enough in the summer; sometimes patience has to be tempered with a bit of resignation/knowledge) --- or a  dozen others which I become obsessed with from time to time....and some would say that by all rights I shouldn't even be trying since they aren't natives by a long shot. But hope springs eternal, otherwise we would never plant anything at all, nor plan anything. Even in what seems these apocalyptic-toned times, the seed waits patiently, even if there is no one to plant it. I suppose it's easy to see how that compressed bit of energy and information we call the seed figures so prominently in popular theological discourse viz. faith. ...and why humans are now proposing and building millennium style mega-seed vaults.