Postcard from the Montréal Botanical Garden

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I will also confess that, during all the time since I have seen you, I have not been able to put your botanical garden scheme out of my mind. I should have been glad – and I still uphold this offer – to make a design for your garden entirely free of cost to you, simply, because the problem attracts me. You see, it has been my dream, for ever since in 1910 I first worked as a gardener’s assistant in the Berlin Botanical Garden and came to know this garden intimately, to sometime get a chance to lay out a new botanical garden in the way in which I think it should be layed out. Since then I have had opportunities to see and know many botanical gardens, but I have not seen one yet that even approached my ideal.

Letter from Henry Teuscher to Brother Marie-Victorin

April 14, 1932

We’ll take a leisurely stroll through the Montréal Botanical Garden and then head back to the Plateau area for lunch, thought the mister and I. But this garden refused to be dismissed so quickly.

The dreams of Brother Marie-Victorin and Henry Teuscher, the landscape architect-horticulturalist-botanist hired to design the garden in the 1930s, have germinated into a sprawling complex of almost 200 acres of themed gardens with 10 interconnected greenhouses stuffed to capacity. Towering groves of trees testify to its 80+ years.

The mister remarked the Botanical Garden seemed like a Noah’s Ark for plants, with virtually every species represented. Turns out, there are more than 22,000 species on the grounds. During high season, more than 450 employees, including horticulturists and botanists, work in the garden. While the park is removed from downtown and admission far from inexpensive, close to 1-million visitors wander the grounds annually.

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We saw only a fraction over the course of several hours, steering well clear of the Toxic Plants Garden (I’ve met poison ivy and oak on several occasions, thank you.) and deprived of touring the highly acclaimed First Nations Garden because of preparation for an upcoming exhibition. Fortunately, we were rewarded midway through with a café break – mine a fresh fig, goat cheese and pesto sandwich.

The random photos above represent only a small portion of our wanderings, and we are not what even remotely would be described as “plant people.” In fact, we have fewer than 20 pots on the balconies of our loft. Yet, the garden captivated my interest to such a large degree I actually have reserved some photos for another post or two….

The Big “A” Boomers Fear: Observing Alzheimer’s 1

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That recurring nightmare. The one where you arrive in class only to find out a test is on the agenda. Or a term paper is due. And, once again, your scattered brain is caught unaware, even though everyone else in the class is fully prepared.

So vivid. So real.

You jerk awake, feverishly perspiring. Mercifully. It’s but a dream.

But suppose you did not wake up just in the nick of time? Suppose you could not shake the nightmare? It persisted, your new reality, throughout the day.

Or in the case of someone we love, suppose you are due in court to represent a client? You toss restlessly all night. You arise in the morning frantic to find the papers.

Those papers the client entrusted to you. Those papers of which there are no other copies. You wander looking for those papers – the ones “they” took.

No one you ask professes any knowledge of them. No one you tell seems to comprehend the importance of the missing files. You are panicked, but they all seem unconcerned.

The client is scheduled to arrive any minute to meet with you; yet, you have done nothing for him.

You watch the clock, awaiting the appointed time.

You were always so responsible. So reliable. Now caught flat-footed. Unprepared. Unable to remember any facts of the case. You put your hand to your head, as though that will force the jumbled file cabinet inside to spring open.

How is this happening? How will you face “this old guy” who put his faith in you?

2 o’clock slowly, slowly comes.

And goes.

The client doesn’t show.

Repeat.

Sandra Cisneros letting sense of place shine

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Without a sense of place the work is often reduced to a cry of voices in empty rooms, a literature of the self, at its best poetic music; at its worst a thin gruel of the ego.

William Kennedy

 
If a statue of St. Joseph is buried somewhere in Sandra Cisneros’ yard, please unearth it.
That’s unfair and selfish, I know. But she’s not just writing about her neighborhood, it’s mine as well.
Her writer’s quill is one contributing immensely to this porcupine of a city.