Post 44 

Happy 4th. This blog has a local emphasis but since all goodness is not concentrated in the Wissahickon Valley, some posts, like their author, may wander. In this case to Maine.

From where I have just returned from a vacation that featured two great, very different types of gardens: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens , and Monhegan Island.

I do not know how, but in just 5 years  the first of these has managed to create a large, excellent public garden.

And perhaps best of all its its recently added children's garden, which is a delight.

And even includes a library with a storyteller, where, if you look up into the gable, you see--

 In short, so worth a visit.
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Monhegan, of course, is not a garden in the traditional sense. It is rather a small island of bleak but often breathtaking beauty. And just as it is set off from our ordinary world by the sea, much of it has been set off even farther, as an undevelopable preserve.

So there is a small village with a big, old-fashioned inn (the spire on the left)

around a harbour

of fishermen, artists, nature-lovers, workers and summer people. Then there is a large reserve of wild spaces

 Criss-crossed by trails

Through woods with fairy houses,

 And blooming meadows,

To blooming seasides,

And onward to the highest cliffs on the Eastern Seaboard,

And then back,

To the village,

To the Inn,

To sit out on its front lawn with a drink, 

 Before dinner and nightfall.

Monhegan has all the magic of island light--light reflected up from the sea, down from the sky, and so diffused all around.

So while it is an ordinary island in an ordinary world, 

It is also sometimes a hint at that extra something that is often found in works of art, in great gardens, in spiritual and peak experiences,

--an island of light in an extraordinary world.

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Since this is the United States of America's Bday, and the U.S. is a nation of immigrants, it seems fitting to celebrate one particular immigrant who has made this post possible.

This is Mito from Bulgaria. He is a waiter at the Inn in summer, and works at a dude ranch in winter. When he first came to America he worked in New York but hated it, and so explored till he found a more peaceful place. He likes to hike around the island and during one hike, found a beat-up, point and shoot, digital camera on the trail. He picked it up and instead of keeping it or selling it, he brought it back to the Inn. There, he showed it to other staff to see if anyone recognized the man with a pack who showed up in some of the pictures. Which is how my lost camera made it back to my husband, and then me. 

Honest, adventurous, cooperative and energetic, eager to believe in, and exemplify what is best in our country, Mito reminds us to live up to the dreams our immigrant forefathers and mothers had for us. Whenever they came here, however they came here, I hope we can make them proud of what we have made of the country they have given us.

Chanticleer, or Wonder at the Call of the Dawn

 Post 42

Is the wish to share wonder the first stirring of art?

To combine wildness and order, light and shade through love so that you can share the inklings and glimmers of infinity that fill you, and seem to overflow from you?

Welcome to Chanticleer.

Chanticleer  is an extraordinary pleasure garden on the Main Line.  Chanticleer is named after a rooster who shows up in Northern European folklore. a rooster like the one emblemed on top of this pool houses.

How do you communicate moments of wonder, when your senses seem to be taking in more than they can hold? Like at first light, when out of nowhere, emerges the rich complexity of reality.

Go to Chanticleer, walk around, maybe sit for a bit.

Such beautiful, expansive and witty public gardens, 'built solely for pleasure', are a blessing of this area. Within a few hours or less you can reach Chanticleer, Longwood Garden, Winterthur, Scott Arboretum , Morris Arboretum, Mt. Cuba , Wavehill, Brooklyn Botanical Gardens New York Botanical Garden and others. All of these are inspiration on many levels,

So, if you are lucky and willing, here are dawns, foretastes, or deep tastes, of what reality might be, or could be, or is, at sublime moments of joy and awe.

When everything mixes up at levels of complexity beyond human reason, but not beyond human experience, imagination and art.

Perhaps it is what Coleridge called Reason. Or not. Perhaps something else. But whatever it is, it includes the wonder that overflows and makes people make things.

... gardens, emblems of possibility, if you can just let its pleasures reach you. 

P.S. --Apologies for the pics, which do not do justice to this great garden. It was mid-day on a sunny day when I was there, and that is a hard time to get decent shots.