Deborah Silver is an accomplished and experienced landscape and garden designer whose firm first opened its doors in 1986.
This year’s Halloween was slow early on, but picked up speed later. I closed the door at 8:20, with 2 of the 40 pounds of chocolate we had bought left over. A good time was had by all, myself included. There were lots of hellos, Happy Halloweens, and thank you’s-the kids were great.
I read Paradis Express regularly. Delphine Gitterman writes this blog-she truly loves anything and everything relating to the garden. She doesn’t write so much. She publishes lots of pictures. We have become fast friends, via an internet that permitted us to talk, and get to know one another. She lives some 40 miles north of Paris; I live in Michigan. She is an art director; her partner Lucien is a garden designer.
This past fall Rob shopped for Detroit Garden Works in France. One night of that trip involved a dinner-Rob visited Delphine and Lucien. Via skype, Delphine called me. I got to be part of that dinner. Via skype, she was exactly whom I thought she would be. Energetic. Committed. Thoughtful, and passionate. Compassionate. She wore me out. Thank God she has made time for me. The images she assembles for her blog are always striking and provocative.
She has a passion and enthusiam for the garden few others could match. Her interests are wide ranging. How she circles the globe, and reports on gardens and artists amazes me. Her blog is five years old. Her pictures sass me. They energize my thinking. They enchant me. Do you read Paradis Express? If not, you might take a look.
This photograph published on her anniversary post says everything about Delphine. A tiny truck, hauling an enormous Christmas tree accurately describes her. She would willingly move a mountain of ideas with a spoon. She is one single person beaming to all of us about the miracle that is nature. Her take-decidedly unconventional.
She has a voice that I greatly admire. Happy anniversary, Delphine.
This Christmas tree decorated with vintage ornaments, garland, and tinsel is stunning. Their living room, a discussion between the austere and the abundant. Treasured topiaries made an appearance for Christmas, set in the windows.
Their packages are wrapped as beautifully as their table is set.
They are simple, elegant, and lavish, all at the same time.
Their choice of holiday flowers – green and white cabbage florets, and white hydrangeas.
I would have had no idea what I was looking at here, but for M’s explanation. Buche de Noel is a classic French dessert served at the holidays. This seemed a natural choice, given the French heritage of one side of this family. The cake is “prepared, presented and garnished to look like a log ready for the fire used in an ancient fire festival of the winter soltice”-this from Wikipedia, Additionally, this from The Oxford Companion to Food:
“[In France] where the buche de Noel, a roll of light sponge cake, is covered in chocolate or coffee buttercream textured to resemble bark. The conceit is carried further by mounding the cream over small pieces of cake stuck to the main roll, to represent trimmed branches. The ends of the roll and the cut faces of the branches are finished with vanilla cream, imitating pale newly cut wood, and the whole is decorated with leaves made from icing, or meringue mushrooms.”
—Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson, [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 184)
I learned from my friends that the creation of this dessert occurred over a period of three days. Is it not spectacular?
I am sure every one of their Christmas Eve guests enjoyed themselves.
To my friends: thanks again for inviting me to your holiday.
Mother’s Day falls in early May, just as the garden and their gardeners are waking up and working hard bringing on the new season. Like tens upon thousands of countless other kids, I was brought up, nurtured, and loved by a very special Mom. By this I mean a parent whose unconditional love helped me to be. A Mom who read to me, taught me, showed me how to plant my first seeds and helped me weather no end of storms. A Mom who forgave me my shortcomings. A Mom who encouraged me to be independent. She made sure that I not only drank my milk, but that I knew where it came from. May 1 was the 10th anniversary of her death-I still miss her.
Though I wrote about this is a past Mother’s Day post, I am writing about it again. In 2004, a client, whose wife and mother of his children was suffering from an incurable illness, called. Could I possibly make a visit on Mother’s Day? He wanted me to talk to her about what changes and what annuals would go in the garden that year. He asked if I could plant their project first, as he felt the time she had left was running short. I drove those many miles out to Oakland Township to meet with them. They made the rounds of the gardens with me. Her concern for her husband, her four children, and her garden was evident. I could see that no matter her illness, she wanted to discuss the future of the garden. Though that walk was difficult for her, the responsibility she felt towards those she had always nurtured seemed as robust as ever. Funny how one’s own troubles have a habit of fading away, when there is another in need of help. She was a Mom I hold in great regard, and I will never forget that particular Mother’s Day.
I write about this again, as this Mother’s Day, he came by. He was on his way to a Mother’s Day brunch with his wife’s mother. He tells me that though it is hard to be both and Mom and a Dad, all of his kids are doing well. He wanted to be sure his garden was on my list of places to plant for the summer. Did the garden need anything? That I still look after their garden was a Mother’s Day moment for me. I can’t help but think it was no accident that he came by yesterday.
There are other women who have provided me with great inspiration and encouragement. Mien Ruys and Xa Tollemache. Kathryn Gustafson, Beatrix Farrand, Andrea Cochran, Ursula Buchan, Marella Agnelli, and Claude LaLanne. A real list would be miles longer than this, and would certainly include Eleanor Roosevelt. A thorough list would include some nurturers of the male variety- Dick Beier, Fletcher Steele, Geoffrey Bellicoe, Jacques Wirtz and Fernando Caruncho. The most comprehensive list has lots and lots of names. I like the Mother’s Day holiday. It is a chance to honor those who have been nurturing, and a reminder to nurture anyone and anything that means something to me.