Oh, My Bleeding Hearts

On my way to and from dinner in downtown Salem (Massachusetts), I took a short cut through the Ropes Mansion gardens and took a few photographs.  They have two varieties of bleeding hearts in the garden -- (Dicentra spectabilis) in pink/white and white/white.  I have the white/white in my garden at home and I envy the pink/white deeply.  My pink bleeding hearts are the wild variety (Dicentra eximia), which look like a less glorious, more shriveled up version of the cultivated variety.  For a long time, I thought my wild bleeding hearts were suffering from lack of water or bad soil because they looked so pathetic compared to the plump, lush blooms on the other side of the house but it turns out they are just fine as they are, and I will try to appreciate them better.

Need I say how much I love the name "bleeding hearts" for a flower?  The first time I ever saw this flower was in the well-maintained front yard of a friend's grandfather's house in Scituate, and I have loved them ever since.  He has recently passed away, and I'll remember him for his sturdy kindness and his flowers.  He was one of those people in whose home you cannot truly feel like a stranger, because the light is too homey, the occasional silences too companionable.  You can't look at this flower without thinking about love, the passionate love of a sweetheart, or the companionable love of family.

There were irises in the Ropes Mansion garden that remind me of my college mentor, who I think still lives in California.  I remember sitting in her narrow office surrounded by books on ancient Greece and Rome, the professor telling me about scattering shell in her garden for flowers, most notably, the acanthus (which I've chosen to show here instead of the irises).  My mentor loved the acanthus flowers best because she had a passion for ancient Greece, and Corinthian columns are decorated with acanthus leaves at the top and at the base.  I can't see an acanthus plant without thinking about her.  Once in a blue moon I get a regular card or a postcard in the mail from her, which I tack onto my office wall because they usually have a beautiful picture of Greece -- buildings, people.

She generously taught me my second year of ancient Greek in her office.  I wrote my compositions on her board, and together we puzzled through translations of wonderful ancient texts.  Another professor taught me medieval Latin in the same manner, 1:1 in his office.  He has since moved on in the world, tending a Victorian bed and breakfast in Nova Scotia, a place I will visit, one day.  These flowers will always remind me of the generosity of spirit of professors who are moved to give of their time like this.  Can you imagine being so lucky, to bend your head over an ancient text with the whole of a scholar's passionate attention fixed on you?  I was so lucky. I am so lucky.

Although these are white rather than purple, these white wisteria remind me of my father, who has a purple wisteria blooming next to the sliding door of his small house on a small lake in California.  Every once in a while, he sends around a new photo of a sunset shot over the little lake, and the photograph is always lovely.  I'm glad that my father has such a nice view, and that the wisteria smells so sweet in the summer.  The smell is so fulsome and gorgeous that I don't even mind the bees and I wish I had a wisteria plant like his, with its twisted trunk and heavy spikes of blossoms.

My father is recovering from cardiac surgery that he says was like "getting hit by a truck."  It's a miracle of medicine that he can go out the sliding door, down the driveway, and walk along the lake to his post box.  He says he's going a little farther each day, and that he's determined to "stay on the green side of the grass."  His spirit and his quiet, iron will reminds me of my partner's grandfather, who when asked how he is says, "I can't complain.  Wouldn't do any good."

Then, there was this rose, and my thoughts catapulted to my home office, my computer, files and files of research on roses, the old antiques.  I remember folders full of photographs I shot on Highway 127 along the Massachusetts coast, especially of greenhouses, much like the one behind the Ropes Mansion, pictured below.  Roses and greenhouses and magic.

I've never had a garden like the one I have now, and the one I have now is in full bloom, but I haven't taken any photographs of it this year, because I've been too busy quitting writing.

I see this rose, and I think of my research, and also my very first herb garden, which I planted in a half whiskey barrel on the terraced part of my back yard.  There's chives and oregano, orange mint and thyme, basil, sage, and cilantro.  I'm watering them and hoping with all my heart that I will be able to cook with them soon, the idea of pulling something from the garden that I nourished that will in turn nourish me an exciting prospect.

I want to know what's in the little building behind the greenhouse.  I can see into the greenhouse, but the windows on the attached building are covered with vinyl blinds.  Maybe it's full of statues or spare parts or moldy sofas or piles of gardening clogs.  I don't know what's in there, but I get the sense that it can be whatever I want.