February 2014

Only after leaving the garden show a week ago, was I truly moved. Not that the Northwest Flower and Garden Show wasn’t full of inspiration from talented speakers, lovely display gardens, great booths full of garden paraphernalia and plants, but none of it brought  a tear to my eyes. It was great to connect with friends and colleagues and even reconnect with long-lost friends, but that only inspired laughter, delicious laughter so longed for in these grimmer months of the year. But not tears.

Tears are precious as California rains it seems these days. Tears inspired by beauty or revelation, or tears inspired by sorrow.

After the garden show I had a chilly hour walking the vacant nighttime streets of Seattle, before my commuter bus to the country. Seattle is a city much changed, I must add, since I arrived over 25 years ago and made downtown my home for the first few months. I came to this city, this incredible climate and potent gardening culture as if drawn magnetically. I had never been, knew no one here and arrive with a backpack on my back at the Amtrak station around midnight. So my first experience of this place was nocturnal and urban.

So as I roamed the streets that night a few weeks ago I was in some sense transported back to that time: the excitement of arrival and the fresh start of a new life.  Certainly I have established myself here now and it was shocking catching my wrinkled face in a storefront window. I had changed as much as this city; I was no longer that young adventurer, loaded down only with a backpack and big dreams.  I could accept that, like a rough tree I had rooted in, grown, lost some limbs and

have become a bit gnarled.

But when I turned the corner onto 1st Avenue, in my meandering walk to keep warm and kill time, I was shocked to see that the cork oak which had grown from a concrete planter box for as long as I can remember was cut down. A tree that impressed me partly because it was the first cork oak I had ever seen, and partly because its rugged beauty seem like a smoky poem smoldering out of the hideously blank parking garage. Its absence stopped me. I looked around; got my bearings, I wanted to “make sure” this was the tree I remembered. When I realized it was tears came to my eyes, and I cried.

Now I have cut down many trees in my life for firewood and in making gardens, nary have I shed a tear, at least not to my recollection. Why this tree pulled this response from me, I do not know. Was it ever so slightly an emblem of those first months in a new town, fresh and lively? Was it in someway a  “friend” of that much younger me, now wrinkled and established? Was it the loss of poetry in this ugly bit of downtown?

Luckily the streets were empty that very cold night and I was left to my philosophizing and tears. I realized later that that tree had probably been one of the first notable trees that I had seen in town. I know for years as I passed it I had to acknowledge its beauty with a nod and a smile. It encouraged as it thrived in that horrid place. Certainly I have seen plenty of beautiful cork oaks since in Seattle as well as in Italy, Greece and Turkey… but the first had rooted deeply in me.

The spontaneous tears I may never explain, but the cork oak on 1^st Avenue I will never forget.

Nor this beauty that thrives on the Island of Elba in Italy.

Well, todays the Big Game.  A million wives, and probably even a few husbands, will be “widowed” for the afternoon by the Super Bowl. In the Northwest the statistics might even get worse with the Seahawks vying for their first Super Bowl win.

Michael never has to worry about me abandoning him for a sporting event, but willow, that’s another story. A few years ago I took the car and left him behind for a 400 mile trip to Christina Lake, British Columbia and Bluestem Nursery which grows and sells grasses, and willows. Michael’s not that interested in willows so I didn’t feel bad and he didn’t either, I guess. This weekend I took the car again to head up to Marysville, Washington, a quick one-hour jaunt north of here, to visit a different sort of willowy place, The Fishsticks Basketry School, and Bouquet Banque Nursery.

I met with willow growers and master basket makers Judy Zuglish and Bill Roeder. I got a first hand look into the world of willow basket making, from the ground up. They grow, harvest, cure and process in anyway necessary willow osiers for making their art. And art it is. Basket weaving has been cheapened by the importation of quickly made baskets from other parts of the world. But these two keep basketry alive and vital in their teaching as well as their baskets of fine rare beauty.

I love willows, as you know; no questions asked, no explanations necessary. So seeing its usefulness, an ancient usefulness I might add, engaged in the modern world made me happy. What better time to celebrate the willow then yesterday the Feast of St. Brigit, or Imbolc, devoted to the Celtic Goddess Brigid, both goddess and saint were patrons of artisans and craftsmen. And the willow is the tree associated with them and the beginning of spring, said to start on the first day of February.

So I celebrate the willow and the coming of spring with a few photos from my visit to that willowy place in Marysville, yesterday.

The ancient and continued winter harvest of willow.

Wonderful colors of willow twigs.

Rolls of willow bark in the studio at Fishsticks Basketry School.

The beginnings of an intricate willow basket by Bill Roeder. One of his skeined willow baskets was recently bought by the Smithsonian Institute.

The beautifully rustic interior of Judy Zuglish’s willow bark baskets feel like some place to nest , to feel at home, humble and exquisite.