I’m a Mommy (of a baby orchid)

My orchid recently blossomed. This is a rare occurrence (perhaps because there is little direct light since my window ledge faces the inside of a U-shaped courtyard. At 12 noon is the best chance for sunlight. When that’s available. The month of March was dreary, being mostly cloudy. James Schuyler and I have that in common. We both live in small rooms in former hotels in a big city. So, yeah, a bloomin’ orchid is reason to celebrate.

This is my #2 installment in a flash series about the memoirs James Schuyler listed in his Diary (edited by Nathan Kernan). In July of 2017 I was on Great Spruce Head Island reading Diary entries from Schuyler—written on GSHI. On August 4, 1969 he was deep in the potting soil reading various gardening memoirs.

Letters from an American Farmer, J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, a collection of essays describing rural life in America, first published in London 1782.

Alpine Flower Garden, Wm. Robinson.

Poet and Landscape, Andrew Young, a favorite book of Schuyler’s, series of portraits of English pastoral poets as seen in their own rural settings

Historical Essays, F. W. Maitland, Cambridge University Press, 1957, first published 1888.

Rural Rides, Wm. Cobbett (1830)

The Farmer’s Tour through the East of England, Arthur Young (1771)

Garden Notebook, Constance Spry, 1950

(John) Richard Jeffries (1848-1887), novelist and journalist, celebrated the countryside of England in remarkable detail but unsentimental way. From Wikipedia: In December 1881, Jefferies began to suffer from his until then undiagnosed tuberculosis, with an anal fistula. After a series of painful operations, he moved to West Brighton to convalesce. About this time he wrote his extraordinary autobiography, The Story of My Heart (1883). He had been planning this work for seventeen years and, in his words, it was "absolutely and unflinchingly true". It was not an autobiography of the events of his life, but an outpouring of his deepest thoughts and feelings.

James Woodeforde, 1740-1803, rural English clergyman and prolific diarist. His Diary which was begun 1758 and continued until death, contains the minutia of daily life, with particular attention to food and drink. The Diary of a Country Parson.

None of these books sound thrilling. In fact if I was stuck on a remote island such as GSHI I would have Amazon drone-drop a box of mysteries—certainly not The Diary of a Country Parson. Schuyler’s interest in such archaic literature at first glance seems improbable. He was a cultured camp with a cosmopolitan finger in various aesthetic pots such art, dance, symphony, and poetry. He did indulge in popular films. He went to art openings, poetry readings, he wrote art reviews. The above titles just seem so far removed from the world of James Schuyler.

But he had a deep and abiding love of nature and flowers. See “Korean Mums.”

Except from:

There is a

dull book with me,

an apple core, cigarettes,

an ashtray. Behind me

the rue I gave Bob

flourishes. Light on leaves,

so much to see, and

all I really see is that

owl, its bulk troubling

the twilight. I’ll

soon forget it: what

is there I have not forgot?

Or one day will forget:

this garden, the breeze

in stillness, even

the words, Korean mums.

I am going to leave off here and enjoy my orchid, staring into its face.