LEGACIES OF BEAUTY

Painting by Paul E. Marquart

 

During these spring-like days when life becomes flowers and soon-to-be gardens, I leaf through two black notebooks with photographs of my deceased brother Paul's paintings and gardens he planted in northern California a few decades ago. I'm proud of Paul's considerable talents in both fields, and I viewed his art firsthand several times, but I never tire of revisiting the photographs his wife took and relinquished to me on a visit about five years ago.

Although the paintings of flowers don't have his usual signature symbols—tiny people embedded in forests and other landscapes —I laugh when I discover them because Paul seemed to think people should be a part of any garden or landscape when he created art.

 

Paul's Garden

I once sat in the garden depicted in the photograph above, wearing a heavy jacket on a summer morning because the wind often blows cold in northern California, even in the summer. I loved the sights and scents of this Paradise Paul had created. He had a checkered past, beginning with mischief-making at an early age as the firstborn boy in our family, and he showed little interest in scholarly pursuits while in school, but he was someone I think Henry Miller would've taken under his wing as an artist living at Big Sur, California. However, Paul would not have liked the idea of being poor, although he would've enjoyed the community and stayed at Big Sur awhile during an adventurous period of his life.

I didn't communicate with Paul for twenty years until one day the phone rang, and I recognized his lazy southern drawl at once. "You need to come out to see us," he said. "I have this old pick-up you could use to tool around in the redwoods." At the time, I was employed at a daily job and told him I couldn't visit, but he continued to talk about his painting, and I told him I wrote poetry. "I'll trade you a painting for a poem," he said, and a few weeks later, we made the exchange. Two years later, I went out to northern California on vacation, and we reunited.

I'm proud to own a few of Paul's paintings and the two black notebooks. Paul began practicing art early, illustrating my father's tales about Jimmy Bear, but he didn't become a serious artist until the 1990s, when he gardened and painted until his death a few years ago. I like to pen the lines "art is eternal" when I look at Paul's paintings and gardens. And when winter closes in, I spend a few hours a week thinking of how art can alter a person's vision—and lead him/her to create a legacy of beauty.

 

 

FOR ANNE SAYWELL, A BIT OF BIRD’S-EYE SPEEDWELL OR VERONICA PERSICA)

Blue-eyed Veronica

Today is a balmy February day, much like spring (72 degrees), and the sudden birth of flowers assures me that we’re going to enjoy the last weeks of our Louisiana sojourn. One of the small, winsome plants that have appeared near our home is thriving in a pasture for horses across Darby Lane here in New Iberia, Louisiana. 

“It’s probably too small to mention because it isn’t dramatic enough,” my botanist friend Vickie Sullivan declared. But I like this tiny blue flower called Veronica persica (Bird’s-eye Speedwell) because it isn’t a “show-off” plant. Linnaeus named the plant after St. Veronica, who appears in early Christian legends as pitying Christ on the way to Calvary and wipes his face with her handkerchief, which then receives a miraculous true image of his features.

Veronica persica has been naturalized in the US from Eurasian sources, and it seems to like horses because it grows almost under horse’s hooves near the golf club on Darby Lane. The sight of it causes me to lighten up a bit today. Yesterday, my dear British friend, Anne Saywell, passed into the “Also World” (as Sister Elizabeth of Convent of St. Mary calls the hereafter), and I was sad most of the day. 

I recently wrote a blog and published a photo of Anne Saywell that showed her in a beautiful sweater she knitted. Anne was someone I befriended in 1974 while living in Ahwaz, Iran, and we kept in touch for almost fifty years. I can’t say I “kept up with” because Anne and her friend, Maureen Allchin seemed to always be aboard cruise ships. They spent several months doing an “around the world” tour during the last decade of Anne’s life. A trip to Bulkington, Wiltshire in England was on my bucket list when Anne suddenly developed stomach pain, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and died 24 days after diagnosis.

I’m publishing Vickie Sullivan’s photograph of the beautiful tiny flower mentioned above as a small tribute to Anne Saywell, an outstanding executive in the administration of Girl Guides in England, a talented craftswoman and gardener who loved fun and games and blessed her friends with enchanting wit. She also possessed a gracious plenty of loyalty to anyone she befriended during her long life. I hope she has a good view of the Veronica persica from her new perch in the “Also World.”

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

FOOTNOTE TO GINGER

Ginger Alive and Dreamy

A large response from readers of the Ginger blog caused me to give it better press than the photo of dead plant specimens in my yard that I published last week. This morning when I viewed a photograph of it alive and well that appears in An Ordinary Day, a book of my poetry, my melancholy mood lightened considerably.

Botanist Vickie Sullivan’s photograph of the plant when it was green and glowing gave me hope for the Ginger patches scattered about our yard. I know that New Iberia, Louisiana has a plethora of dead Ginger vegetation, and our yard tender tells me that we’re on a long list of customers clamoring for the removal of dead plants. So I look at the photograph Vickie took when our plants were at their best and wait for the drooping tan leaves to be cleared.

I know that after the dead leaves are removed, and by the time we return to New Iberia in the Fall, our Ginger patch will have resurrected and will look like the photo of this plant that makes New Iberia landscapes look luxurious and paradisaical. 

 

Photograph & Treatment by Victoria Sullivan