Apple | Google | Spotify | Stitcher | iHeart

Support The Daily Gardener

Patreon

Buy Me A Coffee

Connect for FREE!

The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community

Today's Show Notes

It sure feels like spring.

The light stays longer now.

Afternoons warm fast.

Coats come off before you quite trust it.

And still, the mornings tell the truth.

A thin rim of frost along the edge of the lawn.

Breath visible at the kitchen window.

False spring.

Rhubarb pushing up as if it has decided.

Daffodil tips green and certain.

Pansies at the garden center.

And you stand there debating.

Peas could go in.

Spinach, maybe.

Some Aprils lean forward too quickly.

A late snow.

Wind.

So we wait.

And we don't.

Boots by the back door.

Seed packets on the counter.

One eye on the soil.

One eye on those night-time temps.

Today's Garden History

1741 Celia Fiennes died.

The English traveler rode sidesaddle across England.

Long roads.

Open weather.

And no small undertaking for a woman who was orphaned young and battled epilepsy.

Celia wrote, "I have resolved to travel into every corner," and she did.

Not for bragging.

Not for novelty.

But for herself.

"My Journeys… were begun to regain my health by variety and change of air and exercise."

A body trying to feel better.

A mind wanting more.

And she kept riding.

She did not rough it.

Celia had standards.

To her, cleanliness mattered.

And a decent bed mattered.

A well-run town pleased her.

Celia rode through England with a critic's eye.

She loved what was new.

She observed how places worked.

She judged roads.

She judged trade.

She measured whether a town was thriving or neglected.

When she came to Nottingham, she called it "the neatest town I ever saw."

And when she came to gardens, she judged them the same way.

Kitchen plots should earn their keep.

Orchards should bear well and be neat.

Fish ponds should be stocked and useful.

Water, very importantly, should be managed and not wasted.

Whether for the garden or the people.

When she saw water used wisely, she admired it.

And at the top of her list was Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.

There, the waterworks astonished her.

Engineering turned spectacle.

A copper willow that could rain from every leaf.

Visitors would wander close and suddenly be splashed.

To their delight.

And if Celia's last name sounds familiar, it should.

She belongs to the same family as Ralph Fiennes.

English lore has it that she may have been the inspiration for the nursery rhyme about a fine lady upon a white horse.

Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross, To see a fine lady upon a white horse; With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes, She shall have music wherever she goes.

1854 Mary Hiester Reid was born.

The American painter was a botanist's daughter.

Her father taught anatomy and botany.

So before she ever learned the language of art, she knew the language of flowers.

Why veins branch.

How petals attach.

The way a bloom opens and collapses back into itself.

For Mary, a flower was never just a flower.

It was structure.

Memory.

And her childhood.

Mary studied art in classes full of male students at the Pennsylvania Academy.

There, Thomas Eakins pushed his protégés to see subjects with scientific precision.

And there, she met and married George Agnew Reid.

A man larger than life.

Gregarious.

Academic.

A natural leader.

Mary was quieter.

Private.

Exact.

George saw her as a peer.

And as immensely talented.

He supported her in many ways.

Including building her a two-story studio in their home at Upland Cottage.

Two stories high.

North light.

Steady and cool.

A balcony for stepping back to judge a large canvas.

By 1890, Mary was considered Canada's most important flower painter.

Not merely because flowers were beautiful.

But because she painted them as if they had a soul.

"Flowers have a character of their own," she once said, "just as much as people."

Her passion was chrysanthemums.

Something about all those petals held her attention.

And she painted roses, the queen of flowers, as if they had thoughts.

But for most of her adult life, Mary's heart was broken.

Angina.

Breath shortening.

Energy thinning.

In her day planners and calendars, she tracked only two things.

How her heart felt.

And what the flowers were doing.

On a single day, roses might open.

A lily might drop its last petal.

Chrysanthemums might reach their peak.

And then a note.

Heart steady today.

Or heart unsteady.

Two entries.

Side by side.

The only things that mattered.

Mary mapped her body onto her days in the garden.

And there is one more glimpse of Mary.

Her personal mantra.

"Get cheerfully on with the task."

If her heart hurt, paint anyway.

If a bloom was fading, keep painting.

No denial.

Just resolve.

In the last two decades of her life, another painter, Mary Evelyn Wrinch, came to live and work with the Reids.

Three artists under one roof.

Unconventional.

Complicated.

And somehow it made life easier for all of them.

From that point forward, Mary's paintings often gathered quiet groups of three.

In trees.

Or flowers.

Late in life, Mary traveled to Spain and stood before the work of Diego Velázquez.

His use of grey captivated her.

Light dissolving form.

Mary started walking her garden at twilight.

Soon, she mastered how to paint it.

Silvery.

Misted.

Tranquil.

In 1921, Mary died.

She was sixty-seven.

She wanted George to marry again.

She wanted her studio to endure.

And she wanted her garden to go on.

And it did.

Cheerfully.

Just as she asked.

Unearthed Words

1937 Bella Akhmadulina was born.

In today's Unearthed Words, we hear a poem from the Russian poet Bella Akhmadulina.

She became one of the most beloved voices of postwar Russia.

Known for her lyrical intensity and public readings that drew enormous crowds.

Here's an excerpt from her 1962 poem, "A Fairytale About Rain," translated by Kirill Tolmachev:

Right from the morning I was chased by Rain.

"Oh, would you stop!" I was demanding curtly.

He would fall back, but like a little daughter devotedly would follow me again.

Rain stuck to my wet back just like a wing.

I was reproaching him:

"Feel shame, you villain!

A gardener expects you in his village!

Go visit buds!

What did you see in me?"

The heat around was utterly extreme. Rain followed me, forgetful and unheeding.

I was surrounded by the dancing children as if I were a watering machine.

Then, acting wise, I entered a café.

I sought protection of its walls and tables.

Rain stayed behind the window — a panhandler — and through the glass pane tried to find his way.

She scolds the rain.

She bargains with it.

She hides from it.

And still it follows.

Gardeners know.

Some things that feel like nuisance are also mercy.

Book Recommendation

The Art of Pressed Flowers and Leaves by Jennie Ashmore