Evolving Passions

Where do passions begin?

I am a gardener. As far as I can tell, this is a genetic proclivity on the maternal side of my family tree. A line of women who take pleasure in planting and tending and witnessing the miracle of nature unfold. That magic captured me as a child, watching my mother in the garden. Who else would take fourteen tiny sticks, plop them in the brown dirt every three feet apart on either side of the long walkway to our front door and say, "Voila! Roses!" Almost laughable to begin with, but the resulting transformation... that incredible "before and after picture," imprinted on my childhood imagination. Those roses and I grew up together. While I'd roller skate on the sidewalks around our neighborhood, skating up and down that walkway with my best friend Kari, pretending we were Olympic figure skaters, those pitiful-looking "pencils with thorns" were becoming huge magnificent rose bushes with big velvety blossoms. Eye candy with a heavenly fragrance that colored my childhood.

For someone who enjoys having her hands in the warm body of Mother earth, and has the fingernails to prove it, I've been lucky to create a number of different gardens over twenty-five years of married life. Certainly, it wasn't the fact that we ever out-grew a house that played into Ramon and I moving so often. More likely, it was the realization that shortly after we had our small postage-stamp-sized California yard landscaped and grown to young adulthood, we found our "project oriented" selves hankering for more land or "re-modeling" what we'd already created.

In 1996, we solved our "running out of space to garden" problem permanently. Today our corner of Eden sits on the sun-soaked eastern foothills of Morgan Hill: twenty six acres of rolling hillside dotted with California oaks, overlooking a valley that was once noted for its miles and miles of fruit orchards. For years after building this house, my artistic energies were focused on raising my three adolescent children and transforming the wild hillside into an abundance of gardens with my favorite flowers and trees. I was passionate collector of plants until my burgeoning creation started demanding so much time in maintenance and upkeep, I found myself having to consciously decide whether or not that one more gorgeous rose I coveted, was worth adding the the hundred or so I already had to cut back in the late fall. Curtailing my trips to the nursery, I found myself beginning to decorate the garden with the usual objects d'arte -- little bird houses, Victorian glazing balls, tiny colorful ceramic mushrooms tucked underneath the roses here and there. Then fairies started appearing, as fairies are prone to do once friends and family are aware you have a "thing" about fairies. And while there's always a danger of the environment becoming overly kitschy--one doesn't want Tinkerbell to detract from the delphiniums after all--our garden is filled with the little creatures, both real and man-made variety.

About six years ago, influenced by the growing number of mosaic pieces I was seeing in garden centers and nurseries, I decided to try my hand at making a small birdbath using a large terra cotta saucer and pot turned upside down as a base. Off to the big boy's toy store for a few necessities: tiles, adhesive and grout. Days later, hammer in hand, I was pleased with my completed project and pondering about what I might do for the next. Not one to start small, or practice a bit more first, I commissioned my husband to build a bench out of cinder block and hardibacker under the old oak tree beside our bedroom. Being the hardscape specialist in the family, Ramon readily assumed the task and wedged the whole thing quite neatly between two large boulders, even sloped to put a drain in the corner so that rainwater wouldn't pool on top of the bench in the winter.

Collecting tiles and collecting plants must stimulate the same pleasure centers in the brain. Back then, Fireclay Tile in San Jose used to let you go into their over runs and extra yard and purchase small boxes of broken or crazed tile for $15.00 a box. This was helpful, but left me limited in color palette so I twisted my husband's arm and made an investment in a delicious variety of colorful tiles through the local the tile store. As with so many of my projects, I figured I would have that old bench whipped out in no time.

Well...not when your only tool is a hammer and you're trying to use it to meticulously crack tiles in shards that will fit together like perfect puzzle pieces. I'm embarassed to admit a good deal of this bench was done in the hammer only method, and I hate to think how many hours of my life this involved. Fortunately, by the time I got to the flowers on the seat, I had discovered a wide variety of tile nippers and was delighted to finally have control of the shapes I wanted to create. How many months I worked to finish this bench? Bench? Really? More like the stair step to a rabbit hole I fell down and oh, the adventures I've been on since...