It is raining, raining, raining. Our mud room has flooded. All sills are wet. The foxgloves and roses are leaning over to examine the streaming earth. My husband’s tin can of a boat almost came a cropper but was raised just as it was sinking. I have not a penny, because the bank is closed due to flooding. The house smells of all the years between now and 1808, when it was plumb and had the fragrance of new-cut wood.
And I am thinking about the hedge maze in the back yard. There is no hedge maze in the back yard, but my children desire one, particularly the youngest, who likes to dash about the little one at the Farmer’s Museum.
This morning I sent my friend Phil an ecard from
Peter Randall-Page’s web site: a picture of a curvilinear labyrinth tucked among the ecards of Peter Randall-Page’s sculptures. I suppose it is his own. The card didn’t go, which seemed about right. If life is a labyrinth with a hidden center, it’s meant to embrace confusion. Then I read an essay by Jo Edkins called
Making Your Own Maze, and after that I looked at
Tom Baxter’s brick maze, a front-yard extravaganza that a-mazes passers-by and brings a note of the eternally wacky and wacky eternal to the neighborhood. It looks quite wonderful in winter, when the bricks melt the snow. I cannot make one like that, because I refuse to do trigonometry, and I can’t see myself wielding a diamond-bladed saw to turn severe bricks into obliging curvilinear segments.
Privet. That is what I see in my future. It is suitable to the period, flourishes in dratted Yankee zone 3 (the front yard is 4, the back yard closer to the lake is 3), and settles down to be a hedge with relative ease. We have an ancient privet hedge along the driveway in front, and it’s quite healthy. I will plant more privet in the back, and I’ll find all sorts of interesting things—like the doll’s plate, clay marble, clay pipe, and shards that I have already found, digging holes with my favorite spade.
Most of my plans for the back yard have been cramped by The Dog, Susquehanna. My ideal is to have a place where children want to play. I already have two sun gardens and a shade garden out front, so I don’t try to make Hanna behave in a flower border—as she gets older, I might. Despite her, I do have a square garden room enclosed by wooden fence and lilac, rose wall with arch, and stone wall. Inside is a dining table and chairs and bench and assorted jungly plants. And I have a tiny gazebo covered with Dutchman’s pipe, assorted lilacs and rugosas, a lovely Bali cherry (there were more before my husband ran wild with the lawn mower), a wild plum, a Maiden Blush apple tree, a stone fairy table by a birch tree that is growing out of an apple-tree stump, and several raised beds for vegetables. There was also a splendid hydrangea standard before the Amish roofers dropped their dumpster right on top of it. A yew hedge loops around a greenhouse connected to the garage, but it looks fairly awful, because the dog uses it as a giant body-scratcher. That’s why yew is out of contention for the hedge maze. I don’t think privet will be as satisfying, but I might be wrong.
Nothing can happen until thousands of dollars tumble down the drain; the skyscraping killer ash that throws limbs about the yard must be dragged from the clouds. I hate to see her go, but since she is under stress and has already impaled the van and filled the yard with branches on three occasions, I think she is doomed, despite the best that cabling can do. As a mother on three on days that can be wild and windy, I have a fellow-feeling for her…
What, I wonder, should the maze paths be? Grass? Isn’t that a pain to mow between hedges? Pebbles? And how small can a hedge maze be and still be satisfying?
It’s raining. The ground is nice and soft and easy to dig. I suppose when the ash comes down, the soil will be hard and tough and resistant. As it should be, I suppose, since a labyrinth is not meant to be too easy.
*********** A site for turf labyrinths, by Jeff Saward.
Online copy of W. H. Matthews’
Mazes and Labyrinths (1922).
***************The lake has entered the town, going far past the STOP signs and far past the No Parking Past This Point signs. The number of tourists is delightfully down, and most shops are closed. Lake Street will soon be Lake Street. Daring people sit on benches, neck deep, and six hapless teens try to raise a sunken boat and motor. Susquehanna-the-dog stinks. Susquehanna-the-river is green milk. The overflow drain in the lakefront park is a pretty little fountain. The garden of boulders and flowers and informational sign is giving pleasure and knowledge to the freshwater mermaids.28 JuneOh, and the book promotion page will float back up, now and then, during the summer, like something tossed up on the Susquehanna, now a green muscular carrier of death and fertility. I hear that, down by Binghamton, at least one house slipped from its foundations and sailed down the river... And 25 miles of I-88 have vanished, so they say, along with some tractor-trailers. I hope the ferrying-to-camps goes well, or well enough.
Hmm. Can't take the van in for repairs, because "Portlandville is underwater." The dam is just a wee bit out of control. That sounds ominous. Maybe I'll try to check out the back roads this afternoon. Early tomorrow part of my crew is heading to faraway Turkey, but it's funny--so far we can't manage getting to the car rental! Dry us out, sun!
29 JuneBlogger is being very, very whimsical. If I vanish, you know why.
