Wissahickon Style IX: The Comedy of the Public Good

Post 57

Gorgeous, yes? And pretty sure to being a smile.

This is not my yard. This was how a stretch of Willow Grove Avenue looked for a few weeks this fall, thanks to the generosity/stewardship/ Santa-spirit of a house-owner who, spring, summer and autumn, fills her front yard with a dazzling succession of blooms.

I drive by it whenever I can.

People sometimes talk about the tragedy of the commons but what about the comedy of the public good? --People who everyday try to make life a bit better for people they will never meet.

 Thousand of people drive by this scene every day. There are numerous ecological reasons to have a garden instead of a lawn. We know it makes the earth, the birds and the bees happy. But it also makes us happy, improving the human ecosphere.

 Drab, ugly, uniform surroundings may be efficient and effective from a classical economic viewpoint--but it's hell on the human psyche. Destroying the human ecosphere is like an animal fouling its nest -- something animals instinctively know not to do.

 Everyday people all over the world go out and do things that make the world more pleasing for others. They do not get paid for it, they often do not get thanked for it. But they keep doing it.

This woman was out working on her garden when I stopped to take these pictures. She gave me permission to show her garden and herself. This woman works hard, she says she does it out of a sense stewardship. She let me in to take pictures and as I left tried to give me a big bouquet of dahlias. I was on my way to do errands and, made shy by her generosity, I took one, an orange one, which I keep, now dried, in a crevice on my car's dashboard. As a reminder.

Fall Clean-Up and Thanksgiving

Post 56

I should write about Fall clean up, which I should be doing, but I'm not, since I've got another cold. So I'm posting some pics of my last blooms to make up for lack of weightier content.

Orange-leaved Crepe Myrtle, cobalt Wolfsbane and purple dried Hydrangea--an unplanned color combo that delivers quite a pow. The hydrangeas, right before they go brown, turn extraordinary shades of purple.

 

 

Aside from some of the easy roses, what other plant gives you so much umph from Late June to early November?  Late blooming anemones are also dramatic against the changing foliage.

Has pink ever looked so strong?

And of course the last bloomer, the perennial chrysanthemums with residual mistflower and geranium.

And the remnants of other flowers here and there.

 

In Thanksgiving for a lovely gardening season, Happy Turkey Day.

Wissahickon Style VIII, Smaller Hidden Kingdoms

Post 55

Hidden kingdoms can be hidden in plain sight. Like here, with blue Wolfsbane receding behind bramble and pink anemones.

I was lucky that I had parents who knew how to look for beauty and who taught me the habit. So when I come out of Weaver's Way in Chestnut Hill and am loading my grocery bags into the car, it is not unusual for my interest to be piqued by this...

 

  

Hmmm, what is the old stone wall from and these ruined buildings beyond.  And beyond them,  is that a charming garden I spy?

There is something about an expanse of old wall that excites curiosity.

What is this stuff and how did it get into contemporary, built-up Chestnut Hill?

So, imagine my pleasure when I was garage sailing one morning and a lovely, gardening couple allowed me into their back yard, where I was lured forward by lulling sights like this...

To turn to one side and see...

That I had stumbled upon one small hidden kingdom without even knowing it.  For here in this charming garden that I had hitherto only imagined,  lay a reality far more charming than I had been able to imagine.

The gentleman of the couple explained to me a bit about what he had heard about the ruins. Once a farm with its own s smokehouse (which explains the barn-like structure,) the property had been bought by Ruth's Funeral Home, where in that very smokehouse, they stored the cold dead bodies.

So--Boo! Ha! And  doesn't this recent discovery make for a perfect All Souls' Day post?  So the next time you're at Weaver's Way and see that quaint old barn thing...

Remember that the lovely body you are filling with such healthy food is but a bit dust and ash in the long haul!

And that some think something may or may not lie beyond. Of which we can not discern much. But rumor does ascribe great beauty and even greater charm to what, for now, we can at best only imagine.

 So prayers now for the beloved dead, if that is your wont. And isn't that a neat lamp on the back of the smokehouse? And, yeah, yeah, the light beyond, etc. Had no idea I was going to go all symbolic when I started this post. But the metaphors just seemed to line themselves up.
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I got to be part of a Halloween celebration that entailed wearing a costume to work. I work in a complex place and it was a complex costume --having something to do, I think, with Katherine Hepburn and time travel and the makings of: a currently mislaid, silent movie from the twenties that inexplicably stars an almost 60-year old Hepburn; "Bringing Up Baby, " and; "The Madwoman of Chaillot."  To stifle my usual long-windedness  I nicknamed it for the feminist literary crit. classic "The Madwoman in the Attic."

And while I rarely show myself in this blog, I figure this isn't really,  me-- so what the hey? Therefore, mix well this small dusting of ash with a big pinch of salt.