#c: marianne patch

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #InternationalWomensDay + #WomensHistoryMonth: Marianne North is almost always labeled a botanical artist, but 121 of her Kew Gardens paintings also feature animals, like this one:

Marianne North (English, 1830-1890)  Foliage, Flowers and Fruit of a Queensland Tree, and Black Cockatoo c. 1880-1 painting, oil on board H 50.9 x W 35.4 cm Kew Gardens Marianne North Gallery [MN790]

PS - This bird is misidentified on the Kew Gardens website as a Red-tailed Black Cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus banksii), but it's actually a Yellow-tailed Black-Cockatoo (Zanda funerea) - the yellow cheek patch distinguishes it as the latter:

You can view all of Marianne North's paintings with animals in them here:

Bonus: Here's an actual Red-tailed Black Cockatoo (male) by Eileen Mayo, from her poster series made for the Australian National Travel Association in the 1950s. Fun wordplay here too - the bird's scientific name is Calyptorhynchus banksii and she placed it on a Banksia plant. :)

Eileen Mayo (1906-1994) AUSTRALIA / COCKATOO & BANKSIA c. 1955-7 poster, 39 3/4x25 inches, 101x63 1/2 cm. Australian National Travel Association

[teaveetamer]

I would 100% read the tier list.

Okay here I go! This is based a lot on my personal taste in addition to what I think it adds to Dimitri as a character. Not putting these in any particular order within tiers.

A Tier:

Dedue: And this is definitely not my ship bias speaking I swear. What more can I say? Watching their supports makes me feel like I’m looking in on something intimate and private. Even in their C and B you can feel the history behind their relationship, which I love. It’s the kind of support I read again and again and always find something new to point out.

Gilbert: An excellent insight into Dimitri as a character. It’s hard to find a character with more self loathing than Dimitri but damn does Gilbert really give him a run for his money.

Mercedes: I want her to mom Dimitri so badly, plus this is the support that brought us the glorious “Dimitri snaps scissors in half” revelation. Dimitri really needs someone that can shut down his self loathing and refocus him and Mercedes is one of the best at it.

B Tier:

Ashe: I just think it’s cute, and it’s nice to see Dimitri have a serious conversation with at least one commoner character. We also get to see a little of Dimitri’s sneaky side, which doesn’t come out all that often in his supports.

Ingrid: It’s a good insight into both of their characters, but something about it just rubs me the wrong way. I find the A support really stilted and awkward.

Flayn: It really is a great support for both of them. It touches on both of their issues, again Dimitri being a little sneaky with trying to hide his taste issues, and a little smattering of hopelessly oblivious Dimitri there at the end.

Catherine: Lots of good Dimitri history here (including that people mistook him for a girl when he was little, which is honestly just kind of adorable) and a bit of discussion about Dimitri’s duties and how he feels about them. And Dimitri being all earnest and excited!

C Tier:

Marianne: Just my personal opinion, this one doesn’t really do anything for me. It’s just not really treading any new ground for either of them that hasn’t already been covered (and covered better) in other supports.

Felix: It’s good but it desperately needs an A+ support to finish it out. It’s like they wanted the whole “childhood friends that have a falling out but make up in the end” and just... forgot to have them actually make up in the end.

Annette: Good for some Dimitri and Annette history and I like to imagine Dimitri kicking Gilbert’s ass for leaving his family like he does.

They Don’t Really Add Anything but IDK I Just Kinda Think They’re Funny Tier:

Sylvain: Dimitri being really bad with ladies is absolutely classic.

Raphael: Dimitri can lift a whole ass wagon by himself. Oh my god.

Alois: Dimitri likes dad jokes Dimitri likes dad jokes Dimitri likes dad jokes Dimitri likes-

Hapi Tier:

Hapi: Honestly it just leaves me with way more questions than answers, even though this support was meant to patch some things up regarding the Patricia subplot. The “Didi” nickname is pretty cute at least, even if no one in fandom ever uses it.

Byleth Tier:

Byleth: He’s literally talking at a wall. What more is there to say?

[iturbide]

Leonie anon again! I totally agree; she gets a disproportionate amount of hate just because of that one support chain, because outside of that rough patch she really is a wonderful character. She has great work ethic and determination, and at worst she's just a little too pushy at times. Honestly I applaud 3H for making characterizations diverse enough for me to have an opinion other than "she's okay, I guess." The support chains are just the gifts that keep on giving!

I completely agree Leonie really does get an undue amount of fandom’s ire simply because of her support chain with Byleth.  Beyond that (and for me, at least, it’s only the C and B entries, I really enjoy their A), her Supports are really fun and show a really well-imagined, highly nuanced character.  She snaps sometimes, but she also apologizes for her behavior, like in her chain with Marianne, where she initially mistakes Marianne’s self-deprecation for not wanting to help in the C conversation, and apologizes for that first thing in their B conversation before helping Marianne have a really nice chat.  She has a very strong work ethic because she came from a small village where they had to make the most of absolutely everything: it taught her to appreciate what she has and waste as little as possible, not to mention giving her all manner of skills to make her self-reliant; she’s also an excellent fisher and cook, as evidenced by her supports with Seteth.  On top of all that, she has a powerful sense of honor, and her determination to succeed in becoming a mercenary is because she needs to pay back the people who helped her get into the academy: it’s a debt she won’t renege on.

But as strong as her work ethic is, she also values peoples’ feelings and desires.  Her support chain with Ignatz is one of my personal favorites, since she encourages him to pursue art because it makes him happy, and even volunteers to let Ignatz say she kidnapped him so that he can have an excuse to travel the world and explore all the different art styles there are to offer.  She’s really kind-hearted, forthright in what she believes -- she tells Ignatz point blank that she’s sure his art will save someone’s life someday -- and willing to go above and beyond to help her friends.  The flak she gets over one Support chain when she has so much more to offer seems like such a shame to me.  But it really is true that 3H does a fantastic job of building nuanced relationships across all the chains that exist, creating fully realized characters through the sum of all those little parts.  I just wish we got more of them!!

[anamelessknight]

Good old four hours.

-The Manuela/Hanneman paralogue was hilarious because Lysithea just annihilated everything trying to come up that single tile path while Byleth protected Manuela.

-The Sothis paralogue got annoying (how did you fail a 20% dodge 4 times Marianne!) but let me try out Catherine for a bit since everyone else had class masteries and I did my usual in not getting them certified for extra stuff.  She is stupidly overpowered wow.

-Mostly everyone’s up to Advanced classes now too.  God I love that movement.  Hilda’s nigh-unkillable and Claude’s got himself a wyvern.

-Lysithea’s almost mastered Bishop and had to do another RNG roll to get Warlock.

-She one-shot the DK again.  She may actually be the most powerful character in the game, even over Byleth.

-Village went way easier this time around even if I had to RNG a dodge on a villager.

-Battalions are so damn good and patching up so many holes in strategy.  Unlike one-shot stat boosters or one-character rings the ability to help all your characters is great.

-Lorenz/Hilda: Hilda’s laziness has caused Lorenz to make a plan of action for everything haha.

-If Cyril had more scenes it would really help regarding certain choices one can make.

-Byleth’s up to 10 time-locked supports argh.

-Gonna make Flayn the Dancer since she is literally my best option.  She’s second for Charm (Byleth out of everyone has first), it can use magic and a good chunk of time she’s not even healing so...

-It’s a multi-haul fishing time so there’s gonna be an hour gone to replenish my fish stores.

Linhardt/Marianne Support C

Once again Linhardt’s Crest obsession lets him dig in to what he wants.  Yikes.  I actually tried looking for Marianne’s Crest myself but couldn’t see any similarities with others, good to know because it’s rare.

10 Elites’ Crests

4 Saint’s Crests

Crest of Flames

Crest of Serios

Erased Hero Crest

I think that’s all of them?

[straykatfish]

This final A1 piece in acrylics came about following an exploration of ways in which the sea is represented in art. I ran a search via Google images and then scrolled through the results, settling on only the images that caught my eye. I wanted images that were visually impactful and as my knowledge of art and artists is still very limited, it seemed to me that this might introduce me to and pique my interest in work I wouldn’t otherwise have noticed.

In the end, the pieces that drew my eye were largely by artists I knew of but only really from a distance. This time I had been drawn in by their work and not their name or reputation. They also, very conveniently, came from different time periods and different artistic traditions. I printed out copies of each and then made drawings from them in different media, which inevitably meant interpretation as this, and my own developing style, impacted on the copies.

First was The Great Wave (1829-1833) by Katsushika Hokusai, a Japanese artist working largely in wood block and print. The result is a very formal and stylised image. I copied this using soft pastels, changing the background to black and omitting the boats drawn up into the wave so as to focus as much as possible on the construction of the wave itself. Hokusai makes tendrils of the foam and fixes the water in position so that, in effect, it’s no less solid than Mount Fuji in the distance. I liked the drama of that and the sense of power it evokes, despite its being static.

Next I looked at what I then discovered was Turner’s Fishermen on a Lee-shore, (1802), an acknowledged masterpiece of grandeur and drama. This was a daunting piece to copy and it felt presumptuous to attempt it. Again, this is soft pastels in an A5 sketchbook and I felt pleased by the way my rendering of some of the elements turned out. I like the motion and the effect of blending and how, without realising how I did it, the marks that form the tumbling foam in the foreground seem to work.

The third piece was Paul Klee’s Golden Fish (1925). The colours deceived me into thinking this was by Kandinsky so I was surprised to find it wasn’t. Klee’s image is almost naive and childlike, a semi-stylised piece that verges on abstract in that realism is barely described. I used soft pastels again for this copy and made the image on black gesso. I like the colourful representations of the fish and the merest suggestion of the surrounding element – water. It was fun to do.

Finally, I took on one of Maggi Hambling’s series of hugely energetic gestural pieces (circa 2012) describing waves, most of which are in portrait orientation and towering so that the impact of power comes across without any further context. Hambling makes broad marks in an expressive style that speaks of the essence of a wave rather than its objective anatomy. I like the way she incorporates unexpected colours into the water, maybe reflecting the way droplets act as prisms to fracture white light; but maybe not. My copy is in soft pastels which are also quite large – especially on A5 paper – and tries to home in on that expression.

My first intention was to make larger versions of these and to weave into them text relevant to the period in which they were made. I had seen typographic art in galleries in Brighton earlier and liked the idea. Later though, I was drawn back to a poem by Marianne Moore called The Steeplejack (c 1930s) which I’d drawn before starting the course and thought to return to that.

After completing the A1 piece, I did return to it and made a series of images owing something to each of the artists, with accompanying text from a particular stanza speculating on how Durer would have liked to ‘live in a town like this, with eight stranded whales to look at’. This is on A3 hot pressed watercolour support; each image is drawn directly onto it and the surrounding colour is black gesso with outlines of white conte.

The ‘D’ of Durer is made by a great wave after Hambling; and the stranded whales wearing lettering spelling that out, is black ink on white gesso with deliberate spaces left between them to emphasise their edges as a Hokusai woodblock might. Beneath is blended soft pastel representing the ‘sweet air’ (after Turner), and last is Klee’s golden fish accompanied by text that describes the water as being ‘etched with waves as formal as the scales on a fish’. Ideally, I would have used letraset for the text but had to resort to handwritten and typed text which I don’t consider ideal. As I have no capacity for calligraphy or even well-controlled handwriting, this remains an exercise until a better way of handling the imagery occurs to me. Also, I’m still quite fond of my pre-course drawing based on this poem and that is interfering with progressing the new way of looking at it.

In the meantime I made a series of drawings and paintings based not on the original art works I’d chosen but on similar real-world photographs which seemed to lend themselves to my chosen styles.

The whales. This is from a photograph attributed to ***

The great wave: this one from a representative photograph attributed to *** – as no one was there for the actual incident – of the largest wave ever recorded in the north Atlantic (2012).

I began to put these into a composition, first as separate images in a sequence reflecting the stylised through to the expressive, and then as part of one whole piece with quite explicit reference to Hokusai’s and Hambling’s waves, Turner’s blending around the whales, and a couple of red fish nodding towards Klee. The bottom image shows in more detail both the formalised structure of the Hokusai wave and also begins to reference a more modern notion of structure drawn from 3D computer modelling when I discovered that one of my reference whales was in fact an animated construct. The red lines represent the wire frame stage of the animation process. Also in this image is my Fibonacci layout, something that had come up while observing NASA engineers in the Mars rover live lab as they inadvertently one day fell into exactly a classical golden ratio tableau. I drew this out in orange conte to find where the focus should be and it was clearly not there.

This led to a further composition which moved the whales closer to the wave and eventually dispensed with both the stylised wave and the additional whale although I retained the red lines for a while and used dots of orange to hint at Klee’s fish.

I tried also using portrait orientation as had Hambling because at one point it seems that the expanse of dark sea and sky to the left was draining the energy from the elements on the right. This is made in inks, oil pastels, and coloured conte on a black gesso ground and while I like the effect of rubbing and scraping at the surfaces to reveal the colours in the layers beneath, I’m not wild about the composition or the rather insubstantial feel of the media I’ve used so I returned to acrylics.

This required yet another iteration of the basic composition and, after checking again both onscreen and on the easel from a distance where the focus needed to be, I printed and  cut out multiples of the feeding whales to position under the wave and determine how many and where they should go. This led to the final composition as shown beneath.

Unfortunately, I could find no way of eliminating reflection of light on the black gesso and moving the camera closer led to the black being rendered as grey by the digital algorithm. The better shot is at the top of this post but from a distance. It can be zoomed for detail. Here, I want to describe something of what remains of the artists whose work brought me to this point. For me, Hambling’s expressiveness dominates the wave structure and contains small patches of colour which reflect her style and also a little of Klee’s golden fish. Some parts of the foam are more stylised than others where I manipulated a stylus in the wet acrylic to make curls in the edges, then further down is a very clear-cut edge to a rising component of the wave, marking with a thin line of turquoise the foreground water from the central melee of the whales. This is the Hokusai influence. I have used blending – by finger – on the foam in the large wave and also in the turbulence around the whales where the behaviour of the water reminded me of the waves in Turner’s piece.

As additional notes, there are two small patches of dark red wash in the black area to the left which I’ve intended as both an indication that this is a ‘live’ area (sky) and not simply one that hasn’t been addressed. The colour reflects those in Klee’s painting. Then finally I’ve placed a dot of orange in the sweep of the wave just between its base and the whales to both reflect again Klee’s fish and also to pinpoint what, to my eye, is the centre point of the Fibonacci spiral.

I have learned a great deal in the making of this piece. First that copying great works needn’t be intimidating and doing so delivers ideas and motor skills subliminally. Second, that repetition (up to a point – I do become very tired of seeing some things after a while!) improves those motor skills as these are refined from many stiff movements to one or two large swift ones. And thirdly, that innovation is born of practice and looking, listening and feeling. I’ve used music quite often throughout this work, in particular the score for the ballet Woolf Works by Max Richter (2017) which describes the tormented life and tragic demise of Virginia Woolf. The final scene is danced before an enormous monochrome sea moving in the slowest of slow motions. I’ve also made audio and video clips of the waves crashing onto the beach at Lancing and used these too to keep the sense of power and fluidity in mind. Most of all though, I’ve had at the front of my thinking the terrible losses we’ll experience if we fail to protect our oceans, our wildlife, and our planet. This is not a political message piece, but for me the subtext certainly is.

Woolf Works, Ballet performed by the Royal Ballet, score by Max Richter. 2017.

Paul Klee, The Golden (or Gold) Fish. (1925).

J.M.W. Turner, Fishermen on a Lee Shore in Squally Weather (1802).

Maggi Hambling, Bold Breaking Waves. (c 2012).

Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. (1829-1833).

All sites last accessed 18/01/2020.

  NB I may edit this post prior to submission, but will not do so subsequently. 

Part 5 – personal project submission This final A1 piece in acrylics came about following an exploration of ways in which the sea is represented in art.

[wendyimmiller]

What does “Rural Metro DC Area” even mean?

The latest in the on-going correspondence between Marianne Willburn and Scott Beuerlein.

6 March 2020

Lovettsville, VA

Dear Scott,

I am grateful to digital correspondence in that I cannot catch one of the diseases currently incubating in the Petri dish that is your part of Ohio by opening a slightly smudged and suspect envelope.  I wish you both healing – and broth. And my very best to your mother as she recuperates too.

My former Marine chuckled grimly when I read to him your description of us living rurally within the benevolent outer rings of D.C. How right you are – how beautifully you put it, and how sad for the country that the wealthiest counties in the U.S. cluster around the warm teat that is Washington D.C.

A bonus of living within that benevolent outer ring – the National Cherry Blossom Festival in a few short weeks. This year March 20th – April 12th.

For our part I will plead only that we live in the far northwest and often forgotten corner of one of those counties, where side roads are graveled and children ride on bicycles without helmets in the evening.  There are generational farms and farmers here, and though it is true that many are turning their hands to the lucrative temptations of artisanal goat cheese and picnic baskets for wine tasting 30-somethings, it is a rural community for now. Our internet data is delivered by horse and wagon.

Every Thursday.

Our washed-out road in the spring.

Still, change is coming. Two of our neighbors are only here on the weekends, and when I met one of the newly ensconced last autumn, she needed a moment to process the fact that we lived here full-time.

Later at a gathering in their tastefully renovated farmhouse (redundant), Michael and I brought down the tone somewhat by joking over the dangers of felling trees on our own – much like you did last month – and about how a death and dismemberment policy on Michael had opened up new opportunities for risk and reward.

There was a Bethesda psychologist in the company. We haven’t been invited back.

We were kids in Northern California in the eighties, and watch this slow urban creep with not a little worry. No matter how large our compost pile, and how ancient and dirty our automobiles, we know that we are part of the very thing we fear.

My grandfather lost his soon-to-be-Silicon-Valley San Jose farm to skyrocketing taxes; and I remember as a child (during a roadtrip into the city) having my mother point at two incongruously planted palm trees in the middle of three levels of freeway flyovers. “Those were right outside our front door.” she said, and then muttered something her children were not used to hearing her mutter.

Though you make such a brilliant case in your letter for selling everything and moving with great haste to the English-grey, Corona-virus-saturated suburban wasteland that is apparently the greater Cincinnati area, twenty years in the Mid-Atlantic has convinced me of two things: I don’t wish to live anywhere colder, or more humid.

Once upon a time, I didn’t know what an ice storm was.

When the tax assessor finally decides that we have rented this lovely piece of land long enough and must vacate it for the second home ambitions of Capitol Hill consultants and their beautifully groomed labradoodles, I fantasize of once again flexing my gardening fingers in a Mediterranean climate – this time in the Mediterranean. The recent Philadelphia Flower Show with its Riviera Holiday theme has only strengthened those fantasies (of the gardening climate, not the Monaco glitz).

They had me at Vespa.

However, I do share your love of moss walks – mossy anything really – and such lushness will not be feasible further south in San Marco, no matter how many young, powerfully-built Italian gardeners I put on the job or how many glasses of Prosecco I sip whilst watching them try.

I too have been underwater with Powerpoints, articles and book deadlines, but there is nothing like unrelenting pressure to make the cold months fly by.  At a recent symposium I was introduced by a cheerful, funny woman who started the proceedings by announcing there were only a few days left of winter. The crowd cheered. I started to sweat blood. There is simply too much work out there and too few hours left in which to do it.

The beginning of a woodland garden.  In that I have decided it will be a woodland garden. Someday.

As you and I are rapidly hurtling toward that part of our lives where we attempt to outdo each other with health issues, I will say that a recent high-speed car accident in Miami (not as exciting as it might sound), has made those tasks Herculean.

I have no chance of finishing all the clearing in the woodland garden before there are bluebells to be trampled in the doing of it. In all truthfulness, and with apologies to Michele, the sight of your mighty brush pile filled me with longing.

I have given up the clearing for now and am instead, observing. What a glorious thing to realize that I could finally see a small patch of snowdrops and eranthis from a hundred yards away this February! Perhaps all the digging and dividing with hands numb from the cold has, and will be, worth it in the end.

A slow, but hopeful start. Snowdrops and eranthis.

The witchhazels have been blooming well, and though small, I can see them in my mind’s eye at three times their size. I am also thrilled to find that the violent butchery I performed upon my hellebores at the end of last March (both the posh niger hybrids and the not-so-posh-but-adored orientalis downfacers), has resulted in healthy, blooming, divisions. I expected they would sulk for longer.

H. orientalis looking remarkably happy after the night of the long [serrated] knifes last March.  Please note sticks and dead leaves signifying journalistic integrity.

I have interplanted one patch with ‘Rapture’ daffodils on the always sage advice of Brent Heath – as it is a partially shaded site, and evidently the cyclamen types can cope best with such things.  A few seasons observing their vigor will tell.

Speaking of cyclamen – I have launched into a profligate romance with C. coum and C. hederifolium after too long seeing them in other people’s gardens and a recent first visit to Gettysburg Gardens in Pennsylvania. All those years of trucking visiting relatives up to the battlefield and eating KFC on a blanket and I could have left them to their mashed potatoes and monuments and shopped for plants!

Cyclamen coum at Gettysburg Gardens in February.

Perhaps it’s for the best, seeing as I also picked up some budding Scilla peruviana with the delusional intention of clearing my entire sunny hillside around it. The bulbs are blooming now on the windowsill, oblivious to the 6b/7 stream valley fate in store for them.

Bloom now little one.  Bloom while you can.

I am reminded of Beth Chatto’s line – “We lost many plants in our impatience to possess them because we had not achieved the proper growing conditions.”

Guilty.

So. Damned. Guilty.

I trust you remember St. Beth, and have reconsidered your harsh words of last July.

Thanks for the visual reminder that I need to cut back the epimedium foliage before I have to use floral snips instead of a weed whacker.  I will put E. stellatum on my list if the foliage looks that good in your Midwestern February. Have you tried the gorgeous hybrid ‘Amber Queen,’ or are you species purists out there?  Walters Gardens & Saunders Bros. have it for those wielding the buying power of the Cincinnati Zoo.  For the rest of us there is always Plant Delights and a home equity loan.

So worth it. Flowers you could pull up a chair and a drink for.

Heal quickly – for Michele’s sake. Men are such babies about the flu.

Yours in journalistic integrity,

Marianne

P.S. Rethink the chamaecyparis.  It looks in need of something you won’t give it – an easy death.  The skinny exclamation point of Juniperus virginiana ‘Taylor’ perhaps? I am saving my pennies for one of my own – or three.

What does “Rural Metro DC Area” even mean? originally appeared on GardenRant on March 5, 2020.

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[turfandlawncare]

What does “Rural Metro DC Area” even mean?

The latest in the on-going correspondence between Marianne Willburn and Scott Beuerlein.

6 March 2020

Lovettsville, VA

Dear Scott,

I am grateful to digital correspondence in that I cannot catch one of the diseases currently incubating in the Petri dish that is your part of Ohio by opening a slightly smudged and suspect envelope.  I wish you both healing – and broth. And my very best to your mother as she recuperates too.

My former Marine chuckled grimly when I read to him your description of us living rurally within the benevolent outer rings of D.C. How right you are – how beautifully you put it, and how sad for the country that the wealthiest counties in the U.S. cluster around the warm teat that is Washington D.C.

A bonus of living within that benevolent outer ring – the National Cherry Blossom Festival in a few short weeks. This year March 20th – April 12th.

For our part I will plead only that we live in the far northwest and often forgotten corner of one of those counties, where side roads are graveled and children ride on bicycles without helmets in the evening.  There are generational farms and farmers here, and though it is true that many are turning their hands to the lucrative temptations of artisanal goat cheese and picnic baskets for wine tasting 30-somethings, it is a rural community for now. Our internet data is delivered by horse and wagon.

Every Thursday.

Our washed-out road in the spring.

Still, change is coming. Two of our neighbors are only here on the weekends, and when I met one of the newly ensconced last autumn, she needed a moment to process the fact that we lived here full-time.

Later at a gathering in their tastefully renovated farmhouse (redundant), Michael and I brought down the tone somewhat by joking over the dangers of felling trees on our own – much like you did last month – and about how a death and dismemberment policy on Michael had opened up new opportunities for risk and reward.

There was a Bethesda psychologist in the company. We haven’t been invited back.

We were kids in Northern California in the eighties, and watch this slow urban creep with not a little worry. No matter how large our compost pile, and how ancient and dirty our automobiles, we know that we are part of the very thing we fear.

My grandfather lost his soon-to-be-Silicon-Valley San Jose farm to skyrocketing taxes; and I remember as a child (during a roadtrip into the city) having my mother point at two incongruously planted palm trees in the middle of three levels of freeway flyovers. “Those were right outside our front door.” she said, and then muttered something her children were not used to hearing her mutter.

Though you make such a brilliant case in your letter for selling everything and moving with great haste to the English-grey, Corona-virus-saturated suburban wasteland that is apparently the greater Cincinnati area, twenty years in the Mid-Atlantic has convinced me of two things: I don’t wish to live anywhere colder, or more humid.

Once upon a time, I didn’t know what an ice storm was.

When the tax assessor finally decides that we have rented this lovely piece of land long enough and must vacate it for the second home ambitions of Capitol Hill consultants and their beautifully groomed labradoodles, I fantasize of once again flexing my gardening fingers in a Mediterranean climate – this time in the Mediterranean. The recent Philadelphia Flower Show with its Riviera Holiday theme has only strengthened those fantasies (of the gardening climate, not the Monaco glitz).

They had me at Vespa.

However, I do share your love of moss walks – mossy anything really – and such lushness will not be feasible further south in San Marco, no matter how many young, powerfully-built Italian gardeners I put on the job or how many glasses of Prosecco I sip whilst watching them try.

I too have been underwater with Powerpoints, articles and book deadlines, but there is nothing like unrelenting pressure to make the cold months fly by.  At a recent symposium I was introduced by a cheerful, funny woman who started the proceedings by announcing there were only a few days left of winter. The crowd cheered. I started to sweat blood. There is simply too much work out there and too few hours left in which to do it.

The beginning of a woodland garden.  In that I have decided it will be a woodland garden. Someday.

As you and I are rapidly hurtling toward that part of our lives where we attempt to outdo each other with health issues, I will say that a recent high-speed car accident in Miami (not as exciting as it might sound), has made those tasks Herculean.

I have no chance of finishing all the clearing in the woodland garden before there are bluebells to be trampled in the doing of it. In all truthfulness, and with apologies to Michele, the sight of your mighty brush pile filled me with longing.

I have given up the clearing for now and am instead, observing. What a glorious thing to realize that I could finally see a small patch of snowdrops and eranthis from a hundred yards away this February! Perhaps all the digging and dividing with hands numb from the cold has, and will be, worth it in the end.

A slow, but hopeful start. Snowdrops and eranthis.

The witchhazels have been blooming well, and though small, I can see them in my mind’s eye at three times their size. I am also thrilled to find that the violent butchery I performed upon my hellebores at the end of last March (both the posh niger hybrids and the not-so-posh-but-adored orientalis downfacers), has resulted in healthy, blooming, divisions. I expected they would sulk for longer.

H. orientalis looking remarkably happy after the night of the long [serrated] knifes last March.  Please note sticks and dead leaves signifying journalistic integrity.

I have interplanted one patch with ‘Rapture’ daffodils on the always sage advice of Brent Heath – as it is a partially shaded site, and evidently the cyclamen types can cope best with such things.  A few seasons observing their vigor will tell.

Speaking of cyclamen – I have launched into a profligate romance with C. coum and C. hederifolium after too long seeing them in other people’s gardens and a recent first visit to Gettysburg Gardens in Pennsylvania. All those years of trucking visiting relatives up to the battlefield and eating KFC on a blanket and I could have left them to their mashed potatoes and monuments and shopped for plants!

Cyclamen coum at Gettysburg Gardens in February.

Perhaps it’s for the best, seeing as I also picked up some budding Scilla peruviana with the delusional intention of clearing my entire sunny hillside around it. The bulbs are blooming now on the windowsill, oblivious to the 6b/7 stream valley fate in store for them.

Bloom now little one.  Bloom while you can.

I am reminded of Beth Chatto’s line – “We lost many plants in our impatience to possess them because we had not achieved the proper growing conditions.”

Guilty.

So. Damned. Guilty.

I trust you remember St. Beth, and have reconsidered your harsh words of last July.

Thanks for the visual reminder that I need to cut back the epimedium foliage before I have to use floral snips instead of a weed whacker.  I will put E. stellatum on my list if the foliage looks that good in your Midwestern February. Have you tried the gorgeous hybrid ‘Amber Queen,’ or are you species purists out there?  Walters Gardens & Saunders Bros. have it for those wielding the buying power of the Cincinnati Zoo.  For the rest of us there is always Plant Delights and a home equity loan.

So worth it. Flowers you could pull up a chair and a drink for.

Heal quickly – for Michele’s sake. Men are such babies about the flu.

Yours in journalistic integrity,

Marianne

P.S. Rethink the chamaecyparis.  It looks in need of something you won’t give it – an easy death.  The skinny exclamation point of Juniperus virginiana ‘Taylor’ perhaps? I am saving my pennies for one of my own – or three.

What does “Rural Metro DC Area” even mean? originally appeared on GardenRant on March 5, 2020.

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↪ b a s i c s ;

N A M E: Ettie Mae Aaron A G E: 28 P L A C E   O F   O R I G I N: Nashville, Tennessee G R O U P: Cheyenne Country Club O C C U P A T I O N: Healer F C: Emily Kinney

❝ I told myself that I wouldn’t be scared, but I’m still having nightmares. ❞

↪ p e r s o n a l i t y ;

P O S I T I V E   T R A I T S: independent ; caring N E G A T I V E   T R A I T S: feisty ; outspoken

↪ b i o g r a p h y ;

L I F E   B E F O R E   T H E   O U T B R E A K:

Ettie Aaron was born on the 15th of August, 1988 to teenage parents Sean and Marianne Martin. Her mother died in childbirth, leaving the small blonde, blue eyed baby girl to be raised alone by her father. For two years, he tried his best to raise her, but when he proved to have an exceedingly difficult time with her, he gave custody to his twin brother Presley. Presley understood what his brother was going through and took the little girl in, raising her as his own. Ettie was raised on a small patch of farm land in Tennessee. She was home schooled for most of her life, that was, whenever her father or grandmother could get her in the house for learning. No, most of the time she remained outside with the many animals they had on their farm. Here she became very close to every animal, giving them all names. She’d get very upset when one of them passed. She was a very sweet girl who cared for almost everyone and everything. She didn’t want to hurt anyone. She felt no urge to do so. She went to a public high school in grade eight, which was her first time going to school in general. She got along well with her peers, most likely because she was a shy but very friendly girl once you knew her. After high school, she went to school to become a veterinarian. On top of that, she got a medical degree as well so she would be able to help people if needed. She always had pride in the fact that she was there and ready to help if someone needed her.

L I F E   D U R I N G   T H E   O U T B R E A K:

When the outbreak first started, Ettie had been working at her father’s bar. She was taking the trash out when she heard a scream from inside, recognizing the voice immediately as her father’s. She ran back inside only to see one of them biting down on his arm. All she could think of at that moment in time was that nothing had prepared her for this. Nothing at all. She wanted to help her father so badly, but he’d thrown her a gun he kept under the desk and told her to run. Terrified, she ran upstairs to the attic and locked the door behind her, her finger on the trigger of the shotgun and all times. She was so scared that one of those things she saw would burst through the door and try to eat her too. She eventually fell asleep, clearly exhausted. She woke again not long later, hearing her birth father, Sean’s voice frantically calling for her. She only then emerged from her hiding place and found him, hugging him tightly as she tried to hide her eyes from what she assumed were the remains of the man who’d raised her over the bar. After that, Sean loaded up Ettie’s car and they set off to some town Ettie had never even heard of. She argued with him most of the way, fearing the worst. She worried this random town he’d heard of would already be overrun, but Sean wouldn’t hear it and drove them there. They lived like that for a while, on the road, scavenging and hunting for food while defending themselves against the infected. When they got to Cheyenne, they were welcomed into the Country Club. Because of her medical degree, Ettie fit right in as a healer.

L I F E   A F T E R   T H E   O U T B R E A K:

Ettie used to be a sweet and innocent little farm girl who couldn’t hurt a soul. Now, she’s changed drastically to survive in this new world. She’s learned to fight and hunt, though hunting she already knew a lot of since it was something her father and uncle raised her to be able to do. She also got good at scavenging for goods. She would take everything, figuring a lot of stuff was better than no stuff at all. Since she had a medical degree, she’d also take any medicines she found there. She figured that you never knew when you may need some of it. She still has that urge to make friends, but she worries that she’ll lose people like she lost her father so is hesitant to do so. One thing she hasn’t told anyone yet is that she’s been having reoccurring nightmares about her father’s death. She worries that if she tells people about the nightmares of those she loves dying, those who are still alive will actually pass.