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A Beautiful Garden

Before dinner on Saturday, I pulled out one of the three cameras I'd brought with me. This was a disposable camera from our summer trip in 2003. After taking a few indoor pictures, I began photographing the back yard and garden. Since the time the house was built back in 1978 (?) the yard has evolved very slowly into an extremely pleasant and lovely place to spend time.

Most of the betterment of the yard took place long after I'd moved away and began a life of my own. In the time since the first components of the enclosed yard had been installed (a split-rail fence, a retaining wall, a deck and patio, and some trees outlining the back of the yard), the trees had grown tall and wide enough to provide almost total privacy. Just this year, the railroad tie and brick retaining wall had been replaced with a stone wall and a small waterfall.

Mom had extended her green thumb from indoor plants to a thriving outdoor herb and vegetable garden, and there were little flourishes here and there that made the environment much richer in its beauty than it had been in its infancy.

Because any one photograph could not capture the entire yard and garden, I was forced to deconstruct it into meaningful components. This is when I began to see the richness of each one. I began to see the details that one sometimes only sees when taking photographs. The artist in us all wants to create a shot that will convey the beauty we see before us. Most of the time, we instead produce snapshots that don't even come close to expressing what we felt when we viewed the scene.

Although each component of this garden could have stood on its own to create a pleasing environment, it was when I realized that there were so many of these components that what I was seeing was a pretty spectacular whole. This yard and garden might not make it into Martha Stewart's magazine, but considering that it had been created by two people with plenty of other things to do and a limited budget, it was quite impressive.

One certainly did not need to turn a photographer's eye on this place to enjoy it, but doing so enhanced my appreciation in a way that no other method could have.
^ Pittsburgh - August 2004 < A Fiercely but Beautifully Aging Pet Hiking in an Expanded Version of Childhood Turf >