Fair shores & distant vistas work your magic. Gather knife & shears. Forget the oddities of chance, of offered grains - given with alacrity & innocence - strewn carelessly. Walk softly through silence, beyond the ripples-spread of ‘Lower Pond’.

‘New Park’s’ spaces have emerged reluctantly, but, now in homage to smiling hours, direction, dimension, coherence, clarity, come (each in their turn), as rising light pulls form & structure from morass. Between ‘Spirit Bridges’ & ‘Harrison Ford Waterfall’, between the essence of intimate sight & sound, & the bold bravura of larger screens, a newer image comes.

At roughly 110,000 square feet, the verticals are there, now freed from crippling vines; tall & spare, not pedigreed, but precious - custodians of a story told in honest prose. Leaning obliquely below the higher canopy, Witch Hazel quells monotony; and in the undergrowth, while pulling each nascent sapling, one by one, passive-aggressive poison oak & ivy distracts, but does not deter.

Edit exuberance, support Lady Fern & Maidenhair, keep the peace of the place; higher than all but ‘The Mountain’ & its ascent - on 2 sides skirted by runs to the Mississippi & the Great Lakes - what a stage for orchids from another time. Amber memories of a 40’s forest, slip to ‘Sky Garden’s’ shifting vigor; time’s tensions succumb as languid carpets enter light.

Far Pond’s impeccable surface ages, like a Paymaster’s Cottage glass; & in the deepening morning drench, ‘Tea House’ embraces - as it always has- when too much comes too soon. Startled, Crane rises temporarily to obscurity, but high above the pipe line, circles round to another fish-pond’s course; gliding, solid white in his wake, Magellan taunts, two decades too large for lunch.

Sixty watts & now three hundred, which cue to take, what guidance for tomorrow’s plans? Sky lowers & then recedes in schizophrenic dance of insecurity. No matter, there is wondrous work to be done, & though Greenwich time is closing, the hours till then will be delicious. Queen of the Night’s heady posture & honeysuckle’s steady-on, each enough to ‘will’ the best that’s yet to be.

February 21, 2005
Autumn Planting - Initiating Another Chapter at Raku Place,

Along Lady Pools newly freshened and vocal, Replete daffodils begin their winter-waiting in solitary comfort; with a glance here-there, arbitrary homes have been found for them (safe, secure till spring). Beyond Koi Bridge and Purple Bridge more sculpted bulbs were placed, in homage to Monet bench and memories; then, further still (nearby Spirit Bridge), papery bronze clusters sink eagerly into cool earth, awaiting their distant cue. Hours pass; methodically, undergrowth seedlings (beech and maple), leave the scene. Gloved hands work effortlessly, gratefully, crisscrossing newly vacant yardages. Insinuating a constellation of expectations, here (in due time), strength in number, color and configuration, will mark renewal and release.

It is all a test, to see which bulb, in which position will survive nightly treks by tall herds - here before these thirty years, and here thereafter. There was a time when profuse Casa Blanca trumpets soared five feet above Koi Island, their scent beckoning lasciviously within a protected southern exposure, but (caught by fragrance inducing inquisitiveness and a lack of bridge- walking, four-footed fear), they abruptly diminished - to one delight. First seen Polka dot Garden is beginning to unfurl; twenty-nine by twenty-six feet, a modest, though not hesitant effort, aimed at injecting, into the combat of each new day, a sense of grace and cheerful spontaneity. With tentative, rising brows and lips, how better (than with a smile), to view unexpected juxtapositions of scale & nonsense. As gardens promulgate ideas planted in form and texture and time, why not offer luscious purple, spring plumed Ajuga reptans surrounding fourteen, thirty inch cushions of soft, soothing hybrid Lamb’s Ears - placed only a bit too early? The work of two years and five hundred strokes of a mat-knife freed autumn’s bounty, (subsuming raggedy green), providing botanical gold. A small lawn (grown disconsolate), disappears unheralded beneath pointed crisps of gold, sienna, burgundy. Interim propagating almost met requirements. Sheltered from four sides, basking in the delicious frugality of northwestern Pennsylvania’s reluctant sun, with autumn’s past wealth beneath, another experiment begins. If felicitous, the fabric will continue to unroll, perhaps south into Great Meadow or east towards Upper Pond. But, only if an enthusiastic, self-absorbed snowplow (with foot high metal tracks), or an errant automobile, do not escape their anointed wintry paths. This newest garden may yet bring pleasure.

Cloud Garden, roughly skewed at sixty by sixty feet is an older idea in transformation. Gone are four twenty year old fastigate English Oaks who always refused their name, cascading with abandon into bony irrelevance, punishing lilium and peony alike. Their sadly transmogrified forked stumps, plus three temporary metal stands, momentarily support seven Prussian Blue ceramic ‘clouds’ (remnants of S’s long ago airport sculpture), while ‘possibilities’ are explored. Protected on the west by a maturing Canadian Hemlock hedge, the garden occupies a slope ever-rising from a sixty degree to a ninety degree flat plane. Each year ‘Ghost’ van provides the north addressing space continuing nourishment, thirty bag capacity, one hour turn around at a time. Abundant Bergenia, crowding Primrose Path Garden, are plucked and preened for departure from dappled shade to a more direct encounter, and now a hundred dwell meekly, scarlet-tinged beneath revolving iridescence. One knows immediately, their placement is temporary. Though the colors, shape, heft, invincibility of leaf are appropriate, the scale is not. The tone is wrong. Lugubrious clay forms need levity to play against. A zone four winter’s length and the study library will clarify choices. White is in a minor key today, barely present on rail and deck, but the rippling metallic = surface of Lower Pond (once again visible beyond groomed Conte crayon-like Climbing Hydrangea), stiffens and lightens, as the thinnest of solids begins its annual story. Vienna-infused apricot tea directs order and sequence. Logic lies west in a waiting studio (there geometrically fluorescent Birds-of-Paradise deny the chill), then north beyond Harrison Ford Waterfall to Far Pond. A new pruning saw will ferret out a better home for Bergenia, far from failure, where tempered earth and unending verticality welcome visitors.