Category Archives: Garden

October Reprise

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“. . . the report of my death was an exaggeration.”  Mark Twain

It is late October and copious rainfall, mild temperatures, and a few sunny days have conspired to keep the garden green, glowing, and full of flowers.  I expected the garden to be withered with frost by now, an eerily beautiful place of spent flowers, blackened leaves, and winter weeds.  I had planned for it, in fact, complete with a melancholy video to document the season’s end. But when I went to record the demise of the garden with my cameras, I couldn’t find enough source material to make my point.  Still attached to this idea, my expectations got in the way of my observations and I felt frustrated and stuck.  Expecting an end, I found a reprise instead.

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A musical reprise is a repetition of an earlier theme or song with some changes that reflect the development of the narrative line.  The October garden certainly is in the middle of its reprise.  The end of the season is near; perhaps in days, a hard frost will claim its due.  But for the moment, the garden is repeating its performance of roses, zinnias, salvias, and ageratum amongst the autumn theme of goldenrod, asters, and grasses.  Plants are tall, blooms are colorful and fresh, and everything is swaying in the gusts of wind that leap up from nowhere, showering the beds with a flurry of colorful leaves.  A final flourish that has challenged my expectations and reminded me to pay attention to, and appreciate, the unanticipated beauty that is before me.

All text and images of “October Reprise” ©2011 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved

Brass Fanfare in the Garden

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I catch my breath every time I enter the garden through the front gate and turn towards the house.  The copper garden has grown huge, a bower of bright and dark coppery colors celebrating autumn early.  The Coleus have gone to flower and the ornamental sweet potato leaves are lacy with insect nibbling but the color!  The brass section of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra was magnificent this weekend in its performance of “Pictures at an Exhibition” – it seems those grand brass flourishes have translated directly into the September garden.  I turn to look down the stone steps and the color continues, like a brilliant fanfare of red and gold and every shade between.  I look up at the decks from the side and deep warm colors overflow from every pot and hayrack.

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After a large tree fell on the decks last year, I had an opportunity to refurbish the renovated spaces.  I was inspired and challenged by garden artist Keeyla Meadows’  remarkable book “Fearless Color Gardens: The Creative Gardener’s Guide to Jumping Off the Color Wheel.”  I have worked with color in the garden for years, but this book stretched my notions of what was possible.  I took the plunge into bolder color on the upper deck, inspired by a Mad Mats outdoor carpet and my love for dark foliage.  This was the opportunity to revel in the warm tones – apricot, peach, gold, orange, rust, burgundy. I painted a table and chairs, added a bench with pillows, and filled up pots and hayracks with ornamental sweet potatos, petunias, Agastache, Million Bells, zinnias, and cherry tomatoes.  It has become my morning haven, the perfect place to drink in a large draft of glorious color while I write and think.  Unexpectedly, it has also become a haven for bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds.  The deck is small and perched high among the treetops, a promontory for viewing the garden below.  In another month, the trees will shift from summer green to the gold and scarlet of autumn – I look forward to a spectacular flourish to end the gardening concerto for another year.

All photos and text of “Brass Fanfare in the Garden” ©2011 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved

Autumn Minimalism: the Constancy of Change

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The garden now reminds me of a symphony orchestra tuning for a concert. Fall has not quite arrived in its full power and majesty, but the time will soon arrive for its long unfolding. Allen Lacy, “The Garden in Autumn”

Minimalism has been on my mind all week. My student ensemble tackled Terry Riley‘s “In C” on Wednesday, the next day a composition student declared his intention to write a piece in the “minimalist style” and I found myself explaining the intersection of multiple rhythmic patterns and the sense of constant motion that emerges in this approach. Meanwhile, I’m preparing for a visit from friend and minimalist composer David Borden as well as another performance of my orchestral piece, Sketches of America, which includes minimalist elements. So, perhaps it is not surprising that walking through the garden this morning, coffee firmly in hand, I noticed the constant motion of the garden as well.

The floral fireworks of July are a distant memory; September is all about motion. Tall slender stems of late blooming annuals and ornamental grasses lend the look of a meadow in the garden beds, moving in the lightest breeze and shimmering in the sunlight. Bees and butterflies, hungry for a late season feast before winter, bow and bob from flower to flower, layering the garden with another repetition of rhythm. Cicadas haven’t ceased their buzzing ostinato from the night before; the drone is punctuated by a pair of cardinals warning of a wandering cat; once danger is past, melodious bird song resumes. A hummingbird swoops by me, its wings sounding like the roll of a snare drum; we’re both surprised by the encounter, and he cheeps and flies away in search of a more private feeding ground.

I meander to the upper deck, where I can see the garden in its entirety while gently rocking in a chair, my own contribution to the motion of the garden. Even twenty feet above ground, bees and wasps find the plumes of Agastache ‘Apricot Sprite’ that I planted in pots on the deck; they hustle in and out of the long wands of flowers, triggering a pungent scent of licorice in the warm humid air. I’m amused by my feelings of peace and stillness in the garden, when in actuality it is a place constantly in flux, moving and changing in both sight and sound. Minimalistic music, with its floating patterns hiding surprise within repetition, has always seemed to me to be both constantly moving and yet utterly still at the same time. This morning,the garden seems to embody that same quality, a constancy of change.

All text and video in “Autumn MInimalism: the Constancy of Change” ©2011 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved

The Sound of the August Garden

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It is early evening, and there is just enough light to see as I meander through the garden, a last visit before dark.  Angel Eyes and I wander about, pausing to listen to the insect orchestra from various vantage points. A steady two note drone provides the underlying ostinato, while pointillistic voices of cicadas and crickets spring from every direction in polite succession.  It may be too cool this evening for the tree frog chorus – on a warm night, they are the antiphonal brass and rat-a-tat percussion of this natural orchestra, but tonight it seems to be strings and woodwinds.

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I love living surrounded by trees – my attempts to compose surround sound pieces seem feeble when compared to the robust chorus of our woodlands in August.  I really should be in my studio tonight, working on the fourth movement of a large work called “The Four Elements” – fire, or perhaps Lux Aeterna.  But it is difficult to tear myself away from the amazing concert in the garden.  So . . .  I pour myself a modest glass of wine and surrender to nature’s concert once again – Angel and I go out onto the deck for a final listening session.

The late August garden is a tall and blowsy affair.  The plants that survived July’s burning sun and dry soil have caught their second wind and are encouraged into fresh growth by the cooler nights and the rainy remnants of the hurricane season.  Hummingbirds and butterflies flock to their favorite flowers, building up energy for their imminent migrations.  Everything is tall – the shrubs have grown extra arms that reach everywhere, the grasses have sprouted tall wands that catch the wind, and everything seems to flow and spill and tumble in a rush to be seen and tasted before summer ends.

Now it is almost dark – the brash golds and burgundies of Rudbeckia and Zinnia are now only rendered as silhouettes in the fading light.  It is chilly enough to want a sweater and a cup of tea – but it is hard to go inside when the fading light still reveals layer upon layer of texture, shape, movement . . . it is difficult to leave, to walk away from the enchantment of Mother Earth’s humble orchestra.  Tonight, the windows will remain open to the sound of the August garden.

Listen to the sounds of the cicadas and tree frogs.

Text and audio of “The Sound of the August Garden” ©2011 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved