A Crazed Rant

It's an internet meme that keeps popping up in my Facebook feed, one which clearly touches a nerve with lots of people. It is accompanied by a dramatically beautiful photograph of the tree in rampant bloom, all forty varieties of fruit in stunning pinks and reds and purples and whites blooming wildly on a single large tree.

I just got back from a week in the Appalachian Mountains where North Carolina borders Tennessee. It was so nice to go from mid-90 to mid-60 temperatures. We were also at an elevation that was literally in the clouds.

Most of the gardens in my life – the private gardens, the gardens of friends and relatives – have a history associated with them. Sometimes the home has some historical significance; sometimes the garden itself has been designed and worked and maintained for generations of gardeners; and sometimes the garden simply carries with it the long memory of gardening traditions in the deep South.