One Photograph, One Story
Look Around the Edges
A close look at one sunny corner of House 173, where the garden has long since developed ideas of its own
There are some photographs around House 173 that immediately announce what they're about.
This isn't one of them.
It's just a close-up from the garden: ornamental grass glowing in the sun, a couple of white daisies behind it, green leaves going every which way, and an old wooden fence providing the backdrop.
Nothing particularly historic.
Nothing I built.
Nothing broken that required three trips to Lowe's.
Just plants.
And yet, after nearly three decades of gardening on this little tenth-acre lot, photographs like this may tell the story of the yard better than the big panoramic shots do.
Because this is what eventually happens when you stay put long enough.
The garden starts gardening itself.
Look at That Grass
The first thing that catches my eye is the ornamental grass.
The seed heads are practically glowing. Each one is covered with hundreds of fine little bristles catching the sunlight, and suddenly something you probably wouldn't notice from ten feet away becomes the star of the photograph.
That's one reason I've always liked ornamental grasses. Flowers tend to demand attention.
Grass is more patient.
It waits for the right light.
Then it shows off.
And, as anyone who has followed the gardens here knows, we've gradually filled this little property with plants, shrubs, trees and flowers. It certainly wasn't that way when we arrived. Back then there wasn't much here beyond some spirea, a rose bush and another flowering shrub or two.
We took it from there.
Perhaps a little too enthusiastically.
And There Are the Daisies
Behind the grass are those wonderful white daisies with their bright yellow centers.
Simple flowers.
Almost childlike flowers.
Ask someone to draw a flower and there's a pretty good chance they'll draw something that looks like a daisy.
We've had daisies in different places around House 173 over the years. In fact, we once planted Shasta daisies near the back steps because they were beautiful.
They were.
They also smelled awful, and eventually beauty lost that particular argument.
That's gardening.
You learn. Sometimes from books. Sometimes from other gardeners.
And occasionally because the lovely flowers outside your kitchen window smell to high heaven.
Then Look Behind Everything
I like the old wood in this photograph almost as much as the plants.
There's a fence back there, weathered and darkened by years outside. You can see the grain, the discoloration, the greenish traces of dampness and age.
It isn't pristine.
Good.
A brand-new fence would almost ruin the picture.
Gardens need old things.
Wood that has weathered. Pots that have faded. Stones that have sunk a little crooked. A bench with a few stains on it. Those things tell you the garden wasn't installed last Thursday by a landscaping company.
It grew here.
So did we.
And Everything Is Crowding Everything Else
That's probably the most House 173 part of the photograph.
Look around the edges.
Leaves push in from the left. Long blades curl through the background. A tiny white flower peeks out near the upper right. The daisies are trying to hold their ground while the grass leans directly across them.
Nobody is respecting anybody else's personal space.
Which is pretty much how gardening on one-tenth of an acre works.
We've spent nearly three decades adding things to this little city lot, and the result is a yard that can become surprisingly lush. I've joked before about just how much we've managed to squeeze onto our "postage stamp" of property.
You plant something here.
Move something there.
A plant spreads.
Another volunteers.
Birds contribute their own landscape design without submitting plans for approval.
Eventually you're not entirely sure who planted what.
That's the Part I Like Best
When we first started working on the yard, I thought gardening was mostly about deciding where things should go.
I've learned otherwise.
You get a vote.
That's about it.
The sun gets a vote.
The soil gets a vote.
Rain, squirrels, birds and Albany winters all get votes.
And the plants themselves seem to exercise veto power whenever they please.
But every once in a while everybody agrees.
The grass catches the afternoon sun.
A couple of daisies bloom behind it.
The old fence darkens the background just enough.
And somebody happens to have a camera.
Nothing extraordinary happened here.
That's precisely why I'm glad I took the picture.
After all these years at House 173, I've learned that a garden isn't really made from its grand moments.
It's made from thousands of little ones like this.
Hey, thanks for stopping by - see ya' next time!
Keywords
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