Reading in a Summer Garden
Reading in a Summer Garden
Scenes of Quiet Reading #4
Hello, newcomers and familiar friends. It is good to be with you in this last week of January for a short episode of Quiet Reading with Tara Penry. Today’s post continues a series of short vignettes called Scenes of Quiet Reading. You can learn more about the series at the bottom of this post.
In my city, the brilliant snow of two weeks ago has melted to a persistent gravel-grey underfoot and sometimes overhead. The shrubs and trees have sent all their energy underground, and I would too if I could get my roots to work.
Even the fenceposts seem to have lost a little conviction. If someone offered them a cup of chocolate down the block, I think they might slink away.
After the winter holidays and the glistening first snows comes a season of persistence, tenacity, and grit, when I tell myself, Just stick with the plan. Hold on.
Or I tell myself, Oh whatever, just get through the day. It’s short.
That last choice gives license to imagination.
It is January outside my window but June in my thoughts, and I am on a trail in a public garden, petting the soft, fanning needles of a Douglas fir. Mom sits behind me on a bench overhung with scarlet and magenta rhododendrons. We have come here to one of her favorite places to relax after a strenuous morning digging horsetail ferns out of a stream bed near her house.
Our destination at the end of this trail is a covered patio cooled by the respiration of adjacent trees.
Someone has moved the upholstered furniture outside the Georgian rooms. Mom chooses a deep settee. I select a wingback. We are talking about ninety-year-old garden parties — the clothes, the shoes, and travel by rain-gutted roads in a Model A.
A tiny breeze passes through the patio as if to inquire about our comfort. A canopy of wisteria trembles overhead.
On the tea table nearest my chair, I notice three books: Celia Thaxter’s Poems; Edith Wharton’s Italian Villas and Their Gardens; and a paperback titled Hemlock, a mystery novel by
.I offer Edith Wharton to Mom and open the mystery novel myself.
Soon I am spellbound by the puzzle of an eighteenth-century book of herbal medicine gone missing in a house that may be haunted.
The musky-sweet perfume of afternoon seeps into our hair and clothes. Fragrances of cedar, soil, and wisteria steep like a pot of English Breakfast tea left all morning on the tray.
I close my eyes to a hot swirl of hauntings.
Tonight, when I pull my winter comforter up to my chin, I will yield my imagination to the spell of a mystery novel, good for all seasons. In the shadow of sleep, I might smell again the leaning woods.
Inspirations
If you like a little reality mixed with your fancy, the garden that inspired this sketch is called Lakewold, south of Tacoma, Washington. Its story is here. The region is Coast Salish, the garden design like a page from Edith Wharton.
The books mentioned in this sketch are actual ones. Poet Celia Thaxter was the daughter of a nineteenth-century lighthouse keeper and hotel keeper on the coast of Maine. Here she is pictured in her garden around 1890. —>
As you may know, the novelist Edith Wharton also wrote about Italian gardens and interior design. Here is a photo from her Italian garden book:
And you can find
writing here on Substack. When my virtual path crossed with hers a week or so ago, I had just seen two other notices about herbs and gardens in the prior two days. With so many nudges to think about gardens and gardeners, I decided on the theme of this week’s Quiet Reading post. I hope you enjoy this little sprig of summer in January!Scenes of Quiet Reading are inspired by the nineteenth-century genre of the magazine sketch. These scenes can also be called vignettes, the shortest and most decorative of verbal sketches. A sketch transports readers elsewhere without a whiff of action or drama — just a swoosh of imagination. This series began under a Christmas tree and continued after a gathering and among the newsletters at the turning of the year.
Aaahh, I was right there in the garden with you. How wonderful to escape the eternal glooomy cloud of the atmospheric river. Thanks!
"petting the soft, fanning needles of a Douglas fir"--I love this image! (I always have to stop and pet any Lamb's Ears I come across... .)