As I wrote about two years ago in Checkbook Gardener, we have a beautiful little garden oasis on a busy street in the heart of Edgartown, on Martha’s Vineyard. This summer, between the pandemic, four months of drought and a less-than-diligent landscaper (not to be confused with Teresa, who continues to take wonderful care of flower beds and boxes; a true artist; below is an invitation to her recent gallery show), we decided change was necessary.

Dan always comes early in the spring, before my arrival, to check things out. Since (as noted in my last pandemic update), he decided it was going to be “the summer of the backyard”, he looked for new furniture which had a fire element, so we could sit with friends and be warm as the days grew cooler. We purchased six chairs, though only have four around the table. Eventually the pandemic will pass and we’ll be able to sit closer together again. We also rearranged the furniture by the pool to allow another couple to come and still be socially distant.

We have already had several pleasant evenings, sitting with the fire lit, talking with friends well past sunset.

The front of the house, with flower boxes and climbing rose vines, were at peak in late June. These roses will bloom twice during the season. The flower boxes need to be cared for constantly, but add so much to the street-side of the house, where island visitors pass daily. After a scorching summer last summer, which burnt the flowers in the boxes by the door, Teresa solved the problem by planting hearty Coleus, colorful and fast-growing. I remember cultivating one from a cutting in 5th grade Science. This brought back memories.

By mid-August, our new landscaper was onboard. He came in with a large crew and immediately began to implement the clean-up and changes we envisioned. He gave the yard the TLC it had lacked for the past several years, pruning all the shrubbery back significantly. One “shrub” had gotten out of hand. It now obscured the entrance to the garage and the walkway beside it. It couldn’t just be trimmed, as it was all wood inside. It got pulled out entirely and was just replaced with two hydrangeas that will grow large, but can be pruned into shape. Now there is space where there had been a huge bush, but we don’t feel like we are in a jungle.

Slowly, we are coming back into stasis. Next year, everything will be better maintained and we will have our garden back. We were supposed to be on The Garden Conservancy Tour again this year, but it was postponed due to COIVD. We will look better by next year.

I hope everything, particularly our country, is in better shape by next year.

 

 

Front Row Seats

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice!   And if you’re really famous you get to Madison Square Garden.

I’ve seen The Rolling Stones at the Garden and two years ago we were there for Paul Simon’s farewell concert.   And a few years before that my friend Vivian and I were at the Garden to hear the wonderful tenor and crossover artist Andrea Bocelli.

I remember that our seats were way up in that cavernous venue,  and after the long climb we had to stop to catch our breathe before settling down to enjoy the concert.

Then as we and his 20,000 other fans waited in anticipation for Bocelli to take the stage,  Vivian  chatted with two very attractive young women who happened to be sitting next to her.

We had turned our attention back to the stage when we heard two ushers obviously flirting with our two pretty neighbors.

”Follow us,”  we heard one of the ushers say,  “and bring your two friends.”

Vivian’s neighbor tapped her on the shoulder.   “Come on,”. she said,  “they’ve got front row seats for all of us!”

The ushers assumed we were four friends who had come to the concert together,  and Vivian and I weren’t about to disabuse them.   So down we all went in time to see Bocelli led on stage just a few feet from where we were now sitting.

How was the concert you may ask?   Well,  to tell you the truth,  you haven’t heard Andrea Bocelli sing until you’ve heard him sing at Madison Square Garden from front row seats!

Me and Vivian at the Garden

– Dana Susan Lehrman

Still Life

My mother Jessie was a damn good pinocle player. (See My Game Mother)

But she was also a wonderful artist.   A fine arts major in college,  she later studied at New York’s renown Art Students League with the Russian-born artist Raphael Soyer celebrated for his paintings of social realism.

Jessie went on to teach art in high school but although she continued to sketch and would often paint portraits for friends,  she didn’t pursue her own art and was never interested in selling her work.    I don’t know why,   maybe because she was a  polymath,   a Renaissance woman of sorts  –  capable and interested in so much else in life.

But as a child I remember her early watercolors and oils of portraits,  landscapes,  and still lifes on our walls.   Some hung in the house for years,   and a few I especially loved I took when I left home,   but others were lost to me and forgotten over time.

Then in the late 1990s  my father,  and then my mother died,  and I had the bittersweet task of cleaning out their house.    Down in the basement I found dozens of Jessie’s canvases,  some images  I hadn’t seen in decades.    Seeing them there as I knelt in the dusty basement my heart stopped.

Of course my sister and I kept some of the canvases,  and some we offered to family and friends.   And many others,  as well as many of my mother’s art books,  I gave to my friend and colleague Karen,  the art teacher at the high school where I was working.   Karen had  taught previously  at my mother’s school,  and by serendipity Jessie had been her mentor.

Karen hung several of those paintings in her classroom to inspire the students,  and I often found myself going up to her art room just to look at them again.

And then just a few years ago I was to find more of my mother’s lost art when my aunt Babs,  the last of my parents’ generation,  died in Florida at 92.

Babs and my mother’s younger brother Paul met as kids on the beach in the Rockaways,  and became high school sweethearts.  (See Aunt Babs and Uncle Paul)

When they married.  my mother painted a Rockaway beach scene for them and on the back of the canvas she wrote,  “Where it all began!”

My cousins Deb and Robin remember that painting hanging in their parents’ home in New York,   and then in Florida when Babs and Paul retired down there years later.

When we gathered in Florida for Babs’ funeral,   I was moved to see that Rockaway beach scene still on the wall in her house.   But then I saw another of my mother’s paintings I hadn’t seen in years and had forgotten.

It was a still life of a small ceramic planter in the shape of a donkey who was pulling a little yellow cart.   In the cart was a tall snake plant,  and when I was a child that little donkey stood on a table in our living room.   Now seeing my mother’s painted image of that little donkey planter I felt my heart stop once again.

Deb and Robin were planning to keep their parents’ Florida house and spend more time there.   But Robin lives in San Francisco and can’t visit very often,  and so for sentiment’s sake,  she decided to take the Rockaway beach scene back home with her.   Then my cousins pressed me to take the donkey still life.

But the paintings were each too big and bulky to take on a plane,  and so Robin and I brought them to the local FedEx office.   We explained that we wanted one sent to California and the other to New York.

”Considering their size and the distance you want each one shipped,  they both will be rather costly.” the FedEx agent explained.

We both said that was fine.

”Do you want each one insured?”  he asked.

We both said we did.

”What is the value of each painting?”   he asked.

My cousin and I looked at each other and smiled.  “Priceless!”   we both said.

”Where It All Began”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jessie – photo circa 1937

– Dana Susan Lehrman

Magnolia,  the Story of a Garden

After the war a young couple returned to New York from Charleston with their 2 year-old daughter and bought a house in the Bronx on the GI Bill.   (See Parkchester, Celebrate Me Home)

 

There was a wonderful grape arbor in the garden and the girl’s grandmother made wine with the grapes.

To remind them of Charleston the couple planted two magnolia trees,  one on each side of their front door,   and every year in early spring they waited for the first magnolias to bloom.

And they planted peony bushes,  and purple irises in a flower bed,  and tea roses all along the garden fence.

And there was a birdbath in the garden that the squirrels liked too.

Once the girl and her scout troupe had a ceremony in the garden and her father took home movies with his Bell & Howell camera.

A builder added an extension to the house,  and with a long carpenter nail the girl’s mother inscribed the year 1950 into the wet cement on the new cornerstone.   (See Mr Bucco and the Ginger Cat)

A few years later the girl pushed her new baby sister around the garden in her baby carriage.

And soon the girl’s baby sister pushed the family cat around the garden in her doll carriage.

Over the years a few more pussycats and one brown and white puppy dog played in that garden.  (See Fluffy, or How I Got My Dog)

And then one night when the girl was all grown up,  she lent her car to a young man who backed it out of the driveway and hit the garden fence.  (See Fender Bender)

She married him anyway.

– Dana Susan Lehrman