My Photo Journal: October Lake at Twilight

O night, O sweetest time, though black of hue,
with peace you force all the restless work to end;
those who exalt you see and understand,
and he is sound of mind who honours you.
You cut the thread of tired thoughts, for so
you offer calm in your moist shade; you send
to this low sphere the dreams where we ascend
up to the highest, where I long to go.
Shadow of death that brings to quiet close
all miseries that plague the heart and soul,
for those in pain the last and best of cures;
you heal the flesh of its infirmities,
dry and our tears and shut away our toil,
and free the good from wrath and fretting cares.
― Michelangelo Buonarroti, Complete Poems and Selected Letters

The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden,
a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it.
You and you alone make me feel that I am alive.
Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.
― George Edward Moore

Soft, dusky twilight by the shores of Lake Ontario in October.
© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

Vintage Garden Illustration for collage Art, Graphic Design, Papercrafts or Scrapbooking: The Gardener, 1889

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies,” my grandfather said.
A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made.
Or a garden planted.
Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die,
and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

“It doesn't matter what you do,” he said, “so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”
The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener
is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all;
the gardener will be there a lifetime.
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Vintage illustration of a young female gardener from 1889. 4.5 x 6" @ 300 ppi JPEG without a watermark here. Larger image size available for licensing. Please inquire.


From my personal collection of ephemera. These images are to be incorporated into your creative endeavors and not for resale or re-distribution "as-is". Please credit FieldandGarden.com as your source when sharing or publishing.

Vintage Art Appreciation: In the Garden

The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something.
Don’t wait for good things to happen to you.
If you go out and make some good things happen,
you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.
― Barack Obama

This is the real secret of life --
to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.
And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
― Alan Watts
Painting is titled "In the Garden," (?) c1920s by Jindřich Tomec (1863–1928). Originally found on Wikimedia. Digitally enhanced version of the painting as a 11" x 8" @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

My Photo Journal: Sunny Possibilities

Listen to the mustn'ts, child.
Listen to the don'ts.
Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles,
the won'ts.
Listen to the never haves,
then listen close to me...
Anything can happen, child.
Anything can be.
― Shel Silverstein

The bright sunbeam-yellow Black-eyed Susan blooms have been a staple in every garden I've started in the last 20 years. Originally a native wildflower of North America, this perennial cultivar is easy to grow, drough tolerant and attracts pollinators galore!

I currently have two clumps of Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii 'Goldsturm' (originally just one clump but divided in its second year), and one stand of Rudbeckia hirta 'Prairie Sun' (outstandingly prolific this year) but am always on the hunt for more varieties as I expand my existing garden beds.

Photo © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.