Welcome to Cottage in the Court

Uncategorized

Peace In Anne Spencer’s Garden

By Leave a Comment

Peace is here and in every season
a quiet beauty.

Excerpt from For Jim – Easter Eve by Anne Spencer

Anne Bethel Spencer February 6, 1882 – July 27, 1975) Not just your everyday gardener but an American poet, teacher, civil rights activist, and librarian.

Peace in the garden is quite special. Peace among a group of people is an amazing thing. Who knew that most gardeners are believers in peace, love and happiness. Every time I attend an event pertaining to gardening, I am carrying the spirit of Anne Spencer on my shoulders. It was Anne Spencer who wrote about and found peace in her Virginia garden.

Anne Spencer, an African American Woman, a recognized poet of the Harlem Renaissance, didn’t start school until she was 11 years old, only to become quite the voice of her time. Anne Spencer also had a bodacious garden in Lynchburg, Virginia that was the place to pause or spend the night for many African Americans of note, who traveled but could not stay at certain establishments. The organizer of the Lynchburg NAACP in 1918, Anne was very much aware of what was going on around her but chose to write of peace, love, and happiness.

Heaven’s Virginia when the year’s at its Spring.Anne Spencer

As an African American woman who gardens, I can’t help but wonder how Anne Spencer started gardening. Was it when she sat to write on those pieces of paper, which have been lost over time? Perhaps gardening was a welcome distraction. Finding the mental seeds to create a literary garden in her mind, ready to plant on paper. Was it to get outside, allowing nature to help her curate a personal place of peace? I will never know the true answer to the question of why Anne Spencer gardened. I do understand why her garden is just a meaningful as her words ad more important than ever.

Peace in the garden is often a sacred thought. When I immerse myself in the garden, I find the words that often escape me when inside. The evening air gently gliding over my shoulders, the stars illuminating my keyboard..the words come as I am surrounded by peace. Imagining Anne Spencer with her slips of paper, pencil in hand, the moon guiding her words as she sits in her garden writing thoughts of peace, love, and happiness.

Edankraal, built by Anne Spencer’s husband, Edward. The name combines both their names as well as the word “kraal”, the Afrikaans word for enclosure or corral.

I must visit Anne Spencer’s Garden. Paying homage to this African American woman who was more than a poet, she was a gardener. Thank you to the Spencer family for finding partners to help preserve such an important structure and garden. Anne Spencer’s garden lives on in her memory.

Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather

Tree Peonies – Hope of My Garden

By Leave a Comment

Tree peonies buds are great examples of survival in the garden.

Tree peonies are the blessing of my garden and perhaps yours as well. When the weather is finicky, I spend the winter checking to see if they do not bud out too early. While other gardening friends worried about too much rain, I thought, it’s ok my tree peonies need a drink to get through the winter. Winds, a little snow, and a ring of mulch to protect anything that might unfurl before it’s time.

Surviving in less than perfect regions of China, Paeonia suffruticosa is the botanical name for the tree peony. The difference in tree peonies and herbaceous peonies are significant. The herbaceous peony will die back to the ground. Paeonia suffruticosa does not have this trait. In fact, the winter appearance looks like sticks standing 3 – 5 feet in the garden. The longevity of the tree peony is simply amazing. I remember visiting the boyhood home of Woodrow Wilson in Staunton, Virginia. There I found a beautiful stand of tree peonies on the property that are over 100 years old. This truly speaks to their strength. The woody stems help the tree peony survive through the winter madness to show off her frilly blooms in early spring.

Waiting for the unfurling of the buds is a favorite activity in early Spring.

Last fall, I had contractors doing work on the exterior of my house. The tree peonies were in their natural autumnal state of sticks in the garden. If you do not know what they are, one might not know how cherished the blooms are in the Spring landscape. My tree peonies came from my Fredericksburg garden 15 years ago. Every Spring they dance in the border like no one is watching. As the buds swell, I patiently await their unfurling. Little by little, it is like a daily striptease in my front border. Every year the bloom count increases.

SURVIVAL OR DEATH BY CONTRACTOR?

I was worried that my tree peonies were doomed when I noticed that the contractors were not aware that they are my joy in the Spring border. My contractor did not know plants and was not aware of my passion for my garden. Today, the first day of daylight savings time, I could see that my tree peonies are just like me – stronger than I ever imagined. After being trampled on, laid on with a ladder, and who knows what else, I came home to see my prayers answered.

Tree peonies survive abuse in my Spring border.

As I looked closely at each of them, I mentally reflected on their journey from the loving border in my Virginia garden.

Even after being broken from above, the tree peonies basal growth shows signs of hope and life.

In my Maryland cottage garden, the tree peonies are holding on to help usher in a new year in the next garden season.

After quite the irregular winter, my tree peonies gave me quite the Monday surprise!

As we celebrate Women’s History Month, I celebrate my tree peonies because they are like strong women who have endured much and still survived. Here’s to Harriett Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and Fannie Lou Hamer. Each of these women prevailed, survived and left an example that no matter how beaten down you are, no matter how dim hope might appear to be…only the strong get up, bounce back, and continue to survive.

Tree peonies in bloom are terrific examples of hope in spite of the struggles we go through in life.

I am a tree peony. Are you one as well?

Planting seeds of hope,

Teri, From the Cottage in the CourtFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather

New Year’s Eve ..

By Leave a Comment

Please be safe as you share the excitement of new beginnings in a new year, as well as the anticipation of what lies ahead.

May we practice kindness, tolerance and reach back to uplift others in this garden plot called life. It is never too muddy to support each other. Never too cloudy to look at things from a different perspective. Most importantly, it is never to anything, that we cannot share the Love of this thing called “gardening”!

See you in the new year”!

Teri – Cottage In The CourtFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedintumblrmailby feather