Katherine today.
I've had gardens on my mind for a while. I like them.
We were in California for a week to see Justin Garland get married. It was wonderful and gardens certainly were pivotal in the event. We were touring gardens with Franny and Ken's family around Santa Rosa before we made it to the wedding with all of its garden connections. After the wedding we headed up to a resort in St. Helena in the heart of more gardens. I can't imagine someone having lived our week in California without coming home and yearning to become a bigger and better gardener.
We started our week in garden-land in Santa Rosa at a BBQ hosted by Ken's eccentric cousin Steve. He has a big room off his kitchen that is totally papered in photographs of his favorite memories and postcards that connect to artwork he is passionate about--artists like Frida. I noticed her stuff a lot because I'm currently intrigued by her work. I was sad there was never the right moment in the crowd of folks to ask Steve about the Frida postcards placed throughout the photographs.
This same room is bordered in all directions by multi-colored Christmas lights and 1950's furniture and Mexican pottery and dishes. This is an eclectic place. It moves all over the place. So does Steve.
You leave this room and enter a garden designed and tended by the lady Steve shares his life with--LaVonne. It is a glorious garden. Herbs and lilies mingle together and there was a rosemary bush I envied tremendously because the scent was so powerful and good. There were vegetables and medicinal plants and all varieties living in some sort of perfectly ordered harmony that might make sense only to its creator.
The room was so Steve and the garden so LaVonne. I was glad we were included in the family reunion orchestrated because Franny and Ken were in town.
The next day we went to a redwood forest named for a General. My past experience tells me there are lots of individual redwood trees named for generals. This time the whole grove was named for General Armstrong. It's a California state park. It's lovely.
We walked amongst the trees and ultimately all of us--Ken's mom and brother, Franny and Ken, Jim and I--were in a quiet amphitheater surrounded by the redwoods and it was ever so slowly raining golden leaves down. Nobody said anything. A really nice garden moment.
We had a quick lunch at a great deli at Korbel and did a tasting of several champagnes. There were gardens, but LaVonne had called and we needed to meet her at Kenwood to see a full "crush" of some grapes just being delivered.
LaVonne works for the Korbel group of vineyards and got us in at Kenwood to see the grapes arrive in giant steel trucks and then watch them dump them into a crusher vat where a nasty looking coil churned the grapes around and turned them into mush and juice. We tasted the grapes--so sweet and the juice from the first pressing was sweet too. The best grape juice I've ever tasted. We wandered amongst tanks and watched a guy happily stirring a tub of yeasty water with his bare hands. We learned how the bees that arrive with the grapes get filtered out of the wines (a great relief at the time). We learned that folks who had been working with the harvest were really happy people. I really do think gardens help people be happy.
The next evening we ate dinner with Franny and Ken at Chez Panisse in Berkeley where the whole locally grown movement began. Alice Waters began a whole movement with this one beautifully simple restaurant in a simple house. We had a wonderful mean based on what was fresh in Ms. Water's garden. We got to tour the kitchen. Ahhhhhh.
Sunday was Justin's wedding. It was the first Jewish ceremony we ever witnessed and it was beautiful. The blessings made my heart sing. The ceremony took place in a redwood grove that is part of Berkeley's botanic gardens--very holy and quiet and just enough breeze to have leaves fall on the knitted covering for the wedding space that Cindy had created. The design of the covering was based on garden images as well. There are correct and sacred words for the covering C. made and for the space the ceremony took place and I've forgotten those words already. It was a perfect place in spirit and in aesthetics. I never saw C. that I didn't cry for the happiness of it all.
The reception was at a very "green" place with very hard floors, but the food came straight from gardens and the folks who attended certainly all believed in fruits and vegetables and food. It was a good time.
On Monday we headed up to the Napa Valley to "camp" alone at Meadowood. We found it years ago when we first looked into that book about all the places you are supposed to go before you die. We were doing pretty well (we knocked off four anyway) when we discovered we liked some places so much we needed to go back. Meadowood is one of those places. Anyway, Meadowood is a definite splurge and we stayed two days.
We played tennis surrounded by vines that grow on the fences while we listened to woodland creatures moving around in crisp, fallen leaves. We played croquet in the officially required white and/or khaki clothing while we bemoaned the fact that our croquet game was off because some leaves and pine needles had fallen on our otherwise perfectly groomed croquet playing field. We ate at The Restaurant and The Grill where all the fruits and vegetables are grown on farms on the property. We sat on our porch and watched ferns under old oak trees and wondered how the management got the pretty little stag with his pretty little antlers to walk by us on our first evening there. Gardens everywhere.
I'm home now. My garden is dead and yesterday I made dinner out of its last production--harvested just before we left. I'll miss my garden.
Hamlet compares Denmark to an unweeded garden and notes that rank and gross things possess it. That's the charm. You have to look at your garden all the time and you have to tend it and get rid of weeds and rank and gross things like slugs and aphids, and you have to love your garden and notice if it's feeling perky or blue and you have to worry about bugs and critters that want to eat what you've grown and you have to look with joy at the flowers and blooms and fruits and vegetables you've managed to get to your table for viewing or eating. Hamlet doesn't tend his garden and his Denmark garden just plain sucks. If I pay attention to my garden, it thrives. I have no clue what I'm doing, but I know if I just pay attention I manage to grow stuff and it is a happy thing. Hamlet just needed to be a better gardener.
I've had gardens on my mind for a while. I like them.
We were in California for a week to see Justin Garland get married. It was wonderful and gardens certainly were pivotal in the event. We were touring gardens with Franny and Ken's family around Santa Rosa before we made it to the wedding with all of its garden connections. After the wedding we headed up to a resort in St. Helena in the heart of more gardens. I can't imagine someone having lived our week in California without coming home and yearning to become a bigger and better gardener.
We started our week in garden-land in Santa Rosa at a BBQ hosted by Ken's eccentric cousin Steve. He has a big room off his kitchen that is totally papered in photographs of his favorite memories and postcards that connect to artwork he is passionate about--artists like Frida. I noticed her stuff a lot because I'm currently intrigued by her work. I was sad there was never the right moment in the crowd of folks to ask Steve about the Frida postcards placed throughout the photographs.
This same room is bordered in all directions by multi-colored Christmas lights and 1950's furniture and Mexican pottery and dishes. This is an eclectic place. It moves all over the place. So does Steve.
You leave this room and enter a garden designed and tended by the lady Steve shares his life with--LaVonne. It is a glorious garden. Herbs and lilies mingle together and there was a rosemary bush I envied tremendously because the scent was so powerful and good. There were vegetables and medicinal plants and all varieties living in some sort of perfectly ordered harmony that might make sense only to its creator.
The room was so Steve and the garden so LaVonne. I was glad we were included in the family reunion orchestrated because Franny and Ken were in town.
The next day we went to a redwood forest named for a General. My past experience tells me there are lots of individual redwood trees named for generals. This time the whole grove was named for General Armstrong. It's a California state park. It's lovely.
We walked amongst the trees and ultimately all of us--Ken's mom and brother, Franny and Ken, Jim and I--were in a quiet amphitheater surrounded by the redwoods and it was ever so slowly raining golden leaves down. Nobody said anything. A really nice garden moment.
We had a quick lunch at a great deli at Korbel and did a tasting of several champagnes. There were gardens, but LaVonne had called and we needed to meet her at Kenwood to see a full "crush" of some grapes just being delivered.
LaVonne works for the Korbel group of vineyards and got us in at Kenwood to see the grapes arrive in giant steel trucks and then watch them dump them into a crusher vat where a nasty looking coil churned the grapes around and turned them into mush and juice. We tasted the grapes--so sweet and the juice from the first pressing was sweet too. The best grape juice I've ever tasted. We wandered amongst tanks and watched a guy happily stirring a tub of yeasty water with his bare hands. We learned how the bees that arrive with the grapes get filtered out of the wines (a great relief at the time). We learned that folks who had been working with the harvest were really happy people. I really do think gardens help people be happy.
The next evening we ate dinner with Franny and Ken at Chez Panisse in Berkeley where the whole locally grown movement began. Alice Waters began a whole movement with this one beautifully simple restaurant in a simple house. We had a wonderful mean based on what was fresh in Ms. Water's garden. We got to tour the kitchen. Ahhhhhh.
Sunday was Justin's wedding. It was the first Jewish ceremony we ever witnessed and it was beautiful. The blessings made my heart sing. The ceremony took place in a redwood grove that is part of Berkeley's botanic gardens--very holy and quiet and just enough breeze to have leaves fall on the knitted covering for the wedding space that Cindy had created. The design of the covering was based on garden images as well. There are correct and sacred words for the covering C. made and for the space the ceremony took place and I've forgotten those words already. It was a perfect place in spirit and in aesthetics. I never saw C. that I didn't cry for the happiness of it all.
The reception was at a very "green" place with very hard floors, but the food came straight from gardens and the folks who attended certainly all believed in fruits and vegetables and food. It was a good time.
On Monday we headed up to the Napa Valley to "camp" alone at Meadowood. We found it years ago when we first looked into that book about all the places you are supposed to go before you die. We were doing pretty well (we knocked off four anyway) when we discovered we liked some places so much we needed to go back. Meadowood is one of those places. Anyway, Meadowood is a definite splurge and we stayed two days.
We played tennis surrounded by vines that grow on the fences while we listened to woodland creatures moving around in crisp, fallen leaves. We played croquet in the officially required white and/or khaki clothing while we bemoaned the fact that our croquet game was off because some leaves and pine needles had fallen on our otherwise perfectly groomed croquet playing field. We ate at The Restaurant and The Grill where all the fruits and vegetables are grown on farms on the property. We sat on our porch and watched ferns under old oak trees and wondered how the management got the pretty little stag with his pretty little antlers to walk by us on our first evening there. Gardens everywhere.
I'm home now. My garden is dead and yesterday I made dinner out of its last production--harvested just before we left. I'll miss my garden.
Hamlet compares Denmark to an unweeded garden and notes that rank and gross things possess it. That's the charm. You have to look at your garden all the time and you have to tend it and get rid of weeds and rank and gross things like slugs and aphids, and you have to love your garden and notice if it's feeling perky or blue and you have to worry about bugs and critters that want to eat what you've grown and you have to look with joy at the flowers and blooms and fruits and vegetables you've managed to get to your table for viewing or eating. Hamlet doesn't tend his garden and his Denmark garden just plain sucks. If I pay attention to my garden, it thrives. I have no clue what I'm doing, but I know if I just pay attention I manage to grow stuff and it is a happy thing. Hamlet just needed to be a better gardener.
2 comments:
Barbara Kingsolver made me into a gardener. After reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, we planted a huge vegetable garden and what will become a small orchard. And many, many roses.
It always makes me laugh when people admire the garden and remark about how difficult gardening is. My routine answer has been that taking care of plants is just like taking care of any other living thing - pay attention to what it needs, and give it to it when it needs it. Anyway, your post reminded me of this.
Lovely to read about these various gardens/green settings and the happenings in them. I'm glad you got to eat at Chez Panisse. I am a regular reader of fellow Paris blogger David Lebovitz, who got his start as a pâtissier there.
And I guess there were gardens on the brain this week, for I blogged about my Paris Ghetto Garden, too!
Tending a garden has a lot of wonderful parallels with tending a life. Thanks for the reminders of that.
Post a Comment