Christmas In February

 

At the end of the first week of January, I reluctantly took the Christmas light garlands draped around these pots down, and put them in storage.  After all, the holidays were over.  This year I was especially reluctant for the holiday season to end-we had had no snow.  Though the temperature was chilly, we were denied that one ingredient that in my mind makes for Christmas-the snow.   

This photograph with all of the lights blazing taken just before Christmas does seem to lack that special seasonal element-does it not?  I felt we were so ready for the snow-that snow that never came. 

Winters in Michigan are notable for their grey skies, and their abundance of snow.  For whatever reason, our clouds were dry as dust.  It looked for all the world like we had the heat up much too high-and unnecessarily.  We designed a winter display based on the norm for our winters.  The norm went into hiding. 

The collection and placement of these dried stalks of asparagus-Rob had an idea to fragment and diffuse an intense source of C-9 light with those stalks.  This is his version of snow or ice defining every branch distinctly-only that distinction was drawn with light.  Snow on the evergreen boughs in this window box would have added a whole other dimension to this arrangement.  Nature was not interested in cooperating.

I took photographs anyway.  But I so would have loved seeing the front of the shop buried in snow, with the lights running.  Who knows what that might have looked like. 

I took the lights down January 7.  But if you happened to drive by the shop in the past few days, you would have seen those lights going back on the containers.  Lest you think I have gone way over the deep end, Better Homes and Gardens has a photographer arriving Saturday to photograph some of my holiday and winter pots.  The lights had to go back on the pots, as they want to photograph them.   They were insistent that they wanted snow on all of the containers they wanted to photograph.  So the holiday lighting came out of storage. 

 Needless to say, we have been talking about this photo shoot for several months.  This snow squall in late January, just about our only snow this winter, lasted for all of about 3 hours.   2 weeks ago,  it looked like we might have snow showers tomorrow and Saturday.  The Chicago based photographer made some plans to travel-we were at a do or don’t moment.  They have 8 winter pots they want photographed.  Saturday. Who knew the weather would deliver in spades.  

This morning I read that our area has 5 to 8 inches coming tonight.  1 to 3 inches on Friday.  Snow squalls and cloudy skies on Saturday.  Mother nature suddenly has a mind to cooperate mind to cooperate in a big way.  8 inches, no kidding?  We loaded a truck today with props for the shoot, branches, snow shovels and brooms.  We loaded up a blower too.  If every pot is buried, we need to do a little uncovering.  I have already told everyone who works at the shop-do not walk across the lawn and come to the front door-take the side entrance.  The photographer has already asked for fresh snow, and not snow with boot prints.

A photograph of a garden in its finest moment bears no remote resemblance to a real garden.  But a beautiful garden photographed at its finest moment might encourage someone who has never gardened to give gardening a try. This is important to me.  Anyone who paints, photographs, gardens, writes, manages,  composes, sculpts, makes movies, or designs-  they all share this in common. That which gets created implies an audience.  There is a story over which a relationship can be forged.  I am so very pleased that we are about to get snow.  That snow means I will be in touch.

At A Glance: More Normal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seeing The Light

Lighting the landscape is not my forte.  Everyone does a better job of it than I.  Fortunately for me, the light lingers in the summer.  All it takes for Buck to abandon the yard is the warning buzz from one mosquito-he is through with the garden once it gets dark.  When I am working the landscape season, I am up between 4:30 and 5 am.  This means I am often in bed by dark.  Landscape lighting is not a big priority for me. I am happy with the daily dose of natural light, the sun and shade created by plants.  I do have landscape lighting on the driveway-this for safety and security.  Landscape light subtly washes the front of the house.  I like how it looks when I drive by on my way to work before dawn.  But the winter landscape asks for more light.   If it isn’t dark out, it is dark grey out.         

 Though I go out every night after work with the dogs, I am not out there long.  Given how mild our winter has been, I am out with them longer than usual-but a half hour at most.  By that time, it is dark, or well on its way to being dark. The evergreens in my garden would be beautiful from inside, if lit for the winter season.  I do have 2 containers on the drive ablaze with light.  Rob fixes them for me in December-I keep those pots lit until well into March.  They are beautifully cheery.  I have a cut Christmas tree strung with enough gold and white lights to softly illuminate the entire side garden-I run those lights all winter too.   

The process of cleaning and painting the walls of several rooms in the shop has put lighting on my mind again. Landscape spaces are notable for lots of reasons, just one of which is their lack of a ceiling, or roof.  Natural light falls illuminates every landscape space-unless one chooses to plant a tree, or build a pavilion, pergola, poolhouse or other cover.  These rooms in the shop have little in the way of natural light.  The shop ceilings range from 12 to 18 feet tall- this part helps to make a description of how an object might look in a large outdoor space.    Rob cannot, and does not try to light the space as if the sun were shining.  He lights objects.  I am seeing that a lighted object in a dark room pops; every detail reads clearly and dramatically.   

Good landscape lighting can features a specimen tree, or illuminate a walk. One of the great pleasures of a shaded spot is that clearing with its pool of light on the ground.  An object or painting that is spot lighted garners attention.  A dimly lit corner is cozy. Oblique lighting casts long shadows in an interior space.  Whether indoors or out, the mix of dark and light is visually exciting.        

I know that skillful lighting can so enhance the experience of a landscape.  But the experience of these dark interior spaces has unexpectedly provoked a lot more thought about light as a design element.  Were you to ask me what is of utmost importance to me at the shop, I would of course say an experience of great service rendered in a personal and knowledgeable way comes first.  We meet people,  learn their names, we take and file pictures, we remember the kids, the events, and the gardens that go with those names.  A passion for gardening always comes with a name and an individual set of circumstances.  The vetting, purchase, and availability of beautiful objects would be second-whether that object is a fine antique or a fine looking fiber pot matters not.  Great design is great design.  Providing a beautiful and thought provoking experience-this would be next.    

The shop does have some natural light, via our greenhouse roof, and a small skylight.  How we arrange and display things in the shop revolves around creating relationships between shapes, sizes, styles, textures, and color.  That arrangement is not finished until it is lighted.        

I am experiencing my own shop in a different way right now, given some choices about paint.  None of the spaces pictured are finished.  They have some major elements set, and await the arrival of our purchases for spring.  Once the room is arranged, Rob will light them.  We will be another month, getting there.  But in the meantime, I am looking at my own dimly lit winter garden as an opportunity to experiment with creating a better winter landscape experience.    

A little less gloom, and a little more glow sounds good.

Zero At The Bone

 The first week of January for me is all about a certain dormancy that comes with the finality of season coming to a close. If you are old enough to have fallen asleep in front of a tv, and woken up the static that came after the day’s programming was over, you get the idea.  My pause button is engaged.  I am still putting the last of the holiday half and half in my coffee, and dreaming.  That phase will come to an abrupt end, the first of next week.

Next week, Rob, Steve and I will be scouting and shopping in the US for what we need to add to the spring of 2012 in the shop.  The end of January we will clean and repaint as usual.  This year I have a hardscape installation scheduled for the same time. 

The Branch studio is in the middle of a fabrication project for a client in Fort Worth. 

 Another local client’s iron work is scheduled to be ready for installation in two weeks.  We will have steel garden ornament from Branch at the shop this spring very different than anything we have done before.

 

 

 Rob will be on his way to Italy towards the end of January, until mid-February. 

 A pair of containers are scheduled to arrive from France in mid February.  Are my winters sleepy, like my garden?  Not especially. 

 

The garden is quiet over the winter.  This means there is as much time to drift over ideas, as there is time to concentrate.  As much as I dislike the winter, I could not do without it.      

 

To the best of my knowledge, Roland Tiangco, a graphic designer about whom I know little except that he lives in Brooklyn, created this interactive poster in 2009.  I never feel so much at home as I do with my hands in the dirt.  I look at this work of his from time to time-regularly.  This work of his is extraordinary.  Every time I see it, I feel that zero at the bone.  Zero at the bone?  Shockingly good. As in the bouquet of butterfly weed seed pods Rob assembled pictured above.  Shockingly provocative.  If you missed it, take a look.  http://havenpress.com/projects/roland-tiangco/

A much different zero at the bone event?  The house Richard Meier designed and built for Howard Rachofsky. I live in a 1930’s Arts and Crafts house of which I am quite fond.  But this house challenges my eye in every way.  Love the landscape-a lawn interrupted by what looks like corten steel.  The photographs by B. Tse are great:    http://www.flickr.com/photos/b2tse/2219686720/in/gallery-43355952@N06-72157622884919368/

Such is the winter work.  Providing for a spring that is zero at the bone.