Marking This Day

    "Now at last plants are beginning to shoot and birds to sing and it is difficult not to think how much happiness there could be if the world would allow it."    Vanessa Bell

      Today, May 30 is Vanessa Bell's birth day.  She was born at 22 Hyde Park Gate in 1879. One-hundred and forty-one years ago today.  I'm thinking of her, and what she was experiencing in 1940.....the year of this quote.....the lingering effects of her son Julian's death in the Spanish Civil war; her daughter Angelica leaving Charleston for Yorkshire with Garnett; the ongoing war with Germany, and constant fears of invasion with aeroplanes flying regularly over the Sussex countryside.  

      Amid a beautiful 2020 Spring, I'm also thinking of the current times we are living through---a devastating world-wide pandemic, unceasing brutality against people of color by those who should protect, and an immoral  administration that seems bent on destroying our country and its democracy.

     Sitting in my garden, I am comforted by thoughts of you, sitting in your garden, noting new plants budding and blooming, and birds singing. So much to witness and appreciate in the natural world, so much potential for happiness,  if only the world would allow it. Nevertheless, I will pin down and mark this day and this moment...........May 30, the day of your birth.

Unsettled Times

"Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order."
                                                                                            Virginia Woolf

In these unsettled times of Spring 2020, the creative power of making art and making a garden does indeed seem to bring a semblance of order to days, to weeks.  With few commitments and events to attend, I can instead leisurely work on my artists' books, some collage, assemblage, and my website.  Open ended time to garden---plant peppers and tomatoes, dead-head roses, keep the lettuces and tarragon watered.  I appreciate not feeling rushed or obliged to be somewhere.  To just be.

I've also been reading through the Letters and Diaries of Virginia Woolf for the years 1918---1920, trying to discover some of her thoughts, impressions of, and any experiences with the Spanish flu epidemic.  Still searching................

Illness 2020

“Finally, to hinder the description of illness in literature, there is the poverty of the language.  English, which can express the thoughts of Hamlet and the tragedy of Lear, has no words for the shiver and the headache."
                                 Virginia Woolf

 Spring blooms in my 2020 garden.  It has been a year since I was planning my 2019 trip to Lewes to read through Vanessa Bell's letters at the University of Sussex and then attend Cambridge to study Virginia Woolf's gardens.  Such an incredible and enlightening experience.


There will be no trip this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.  So many sick, so many lost worldwide.  There truly are no words to adequately express the grief, the human suffering, the despair.


Still, there is so much to be thankful for here at home. Birds at the feeder, hummingbirds sipping from salvias and abutilons, sweet valencias to enjoy, and an abundance of colors and scents in the garden.  I look forward to June's Santa Rosa plums, ripening figs and pears, and long warm summer evenings.
 

Woolf and Gardens.......Literature Cambridge

“The compensation of growing old is that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained—at last!—the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence, the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light.”
                                                            Virginia Woolf
The experience of reading, studying, and discussing various aspects of Virginia Woolf's use of gardens in her novels was exhilarating.  The Cambridge Literature course provided a wonderful opportunity to meet other Woolfians, explore Cambridge, and then visit Woolf's garden at Monk's House and Vanessa Bell's Charleston garden. Her garden in mid-July was a riot of color, attractive shapes and lovely fragrance. Mauve, scarlet and pink hollyhocks were everywhere, as were dusty millers, foxgloves, lavenders, orange and red poppies, yellow tiger lilies, purple and white iris, red hot pokers, burgundy mallows, purple artichoke flowers, white roses, and an abundance of ripening apples on numerous apple trees. Taken in its entirety, it all added a supreme flavour to existence........

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