It's Not Just about the Blooms, Birds, and Bugs

It's also about man-made spaces: gardens and buildings, streets and towns.

I come from a family of gardeners. My grandmother's lush yard in Virginia offered the lemony smell of old boxwood and deep shade of old trees. My mother's garden brought loose order to the woods and rocks of our hilly yard. My deceased sister-in-law grew into her gardening, and her daughter, my niece, is an organic farmer/native garden designer/floral designer. I am not a gardener of living plants like them, but I love gardens and make my own in words and pictures. I come by this pleasure naturally.

Mother's Rock Gardens

My first love, though, was buildings. Throughout elementary and junior high school, I wanted to study architecture and create beautiful spaces. I grew up in a home I loved, one that my parents and their architect friend designed for our own wooded yard. In childhood, I attended church in two beautiful spaces, one plain and simple like a country church and the other soaring and modern. The same architect designed the latter St. Luke's, and he and my father created the altar and processional crosses that are still used today. Home was cozy; church was austere; both were beautiful.

Home

St. Luke's Episcopal Church

Now I live where beauty thrives in nature and architecture. Each day, I surrender like bee on flower to the perfume of color and line and space and volume, to the blooms, birds, bugs, and buildings that set me abuzz.

Convocation Hall, Sewanee