A GARDEN of REMEMBRANCE
PLANT MEMORIES
It is of significance to me that I live on a cul-de-sac named Recuerdo Cove. The word Recuerdo is 'ricordi' in Italian and means the same thing--memories. Ricordi di Napoli and all that.
Once many years ago,I mentioned to my clarinet teacher that we had recently moved to a new house on a street called Recuerdo Cove. He mused for a long moment in his silent Icelandic way, held his chin, had a distant gaze in his eyes, and said, "What a very fascinating name". I have never forgotten that. Only an imaginative artist musician would make a comment like that. In fact, I have never heard any persons who live here in this cul-de-sac say anything at all about the name 'Recuerdo'. This Cove is a magical place. I wonder if they feel that way also about it? We have lived here for forty three years, within sight of the blue Pacific, on the rim of a canyon that is filled with animals and plants of many kinds. Sometimes these animals come up into our back garden: raccoons, opossums, rabbits, ground squirrels, foxes, snakes, many different and beautiful birds, and butterflies. Our garden is a sanctuary of the living.
I have always thought that Recuerdo is a name holding a deep symbolic meaning. After reading Proust's great creative testament to life and memory I feel even more the power of Recuerdo-Ricordi. I often wonder what it would be like to live without a memory. Proust's life was almost all memory.
My garden is inhabited with with many presences, people that I have known and loved. I encounter them every day as I work in my garden, tend to the plants, and think about the givers of numerous plants. This evocation of memory is not a conscious or deliberate thing. It simply occurs as I see what each particular plant needs for its care and continued existence, as it stimulates and evokes memory almost unconsciously, I would suggest.
This consideration about memory is not mere sentimentality. And, some observers would say that the experiencing of memory is an actual living of sorts in the past. I do not think that memories are only a regressive. Actually when we have memories we are experiencing a very powerful occurrence in our present lives, and this in turn stimulates and informs our present lives. So, memory in this sense is alive and in the present. When we read Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past", we are experiencing his memories raised to the level of art that stimulates our imaginations in the present.
Botanically speaking, all plants carry with them a kind of plant memory. Botanic reference books tell us a great deal of information about each plant's history. Each plant has a genus and species, and we are given its place of origin, climate needs, growing conditions, and innate habits. This is a plant memory: a kind of collective memory similar to the collective or group memory of animals.
The plants in my garden have all of that, but they have much more because they evoke something transcendent to the labeling of genus and species. In the 'Hortus Conclusus', our 'protected garden', plants evoke feelings and memories.
As I make my early morning rounds through my garden, it is impossible for me to separate each plant's botany, new growth, condition, and blossoming from those who gifted the plant to me. There are so many plants that do this in my garden. Each plant in the truest sense is a Blossoming of Memory.". Each plant has a being, an emotional aura, a special palpable presence. Some writers would call this being an astral presence, but for me the plants are that presence and simply great stimulators of imagination and memory. I try not to think about it all too much--it simply happens.
One of the most indelible plant memories in my garden is the Mermaid rose which is an offspring of Rosa Bracteata and the Macartney rose. The Mermaid is an extremely vigorous rose and even grew for many years in the hottest weather in Denton, Texas where my father-in-law once had it. He brought the Mermaid as a cutting wrapped in wet paper in his boot in the trunk of his car. Therefore, he claimed that he "bootlegged" it to our home in Del Mar, California. I think of this when I see the Mermaid.
The Mermaid is one of the most beautiful of roses; large blossoms with yellow centers, creamy edges, and yellow stamens, and the scent is fruity and the breath of springtime. And like the mermaids or sirens of ancient mythology, this rose has a powerful dark side or shadow. "She" can grow to twenty feet high or more (mine is almost up to the second story), and "She" has backward curved lethal, protective thorns that will not release from skin or clothing, and they really hurt!
I have made many cuttings and air layers of this rose as we have moved from one home to another, and now on Recuerdo Cove I have two large specimens of this memory plant which is appropriately within view of the Pacific Ocean. The sea breezes are to her liking, and she reminds me of my father-in-law's gifting every time I care for it.
Memory is an energy that resides where it wishes, but there is a dual energy in a living plant; that of the plant itself and that of the name-energy that went into the gifting of the plant. The name is a residual memory of the giver and grows along side the gardener as he or she cares for and remembers the person who gifted the plant. As the ancient Egyptians said, as long as the name is uttered, the person and the soul live. In this case, the giver-the plant-the gardener- and the remembrance are united. For me they cannot be cleaved into separate parts in my consciousness, nor should they be. Remembrance.
Seeds sent in the mail in envelopes from one person to another are veritable sparks of light. They scintillate with life. And, they will not acquiesce, nor will they be repressed. The seed will not deny itself! It rejects omnipotence in all other beings because each seed in itself is potentia. The very same can be said for tiny plantlets or sprig of plants, such as those of Spanish moss--Tillandsia usneoides.
Many years ago, my father sent me in a letter from my childhood home in Miami a tiny sprig of Spanish moss. I remember Spanish moss and other air plants festooning the massive live oaks that surrounded our house. This sprig refused to be overcome by the long journey in a dry envelope. The power of the Life Force! I placed this partially withered sprig onto the branch of one our trees, and it quickly sprang into life, reproduced, and encircled the twigs and branches tenaciously. Now Spanish moss is a vibrant tenant growing in several trees of my garden, and so much so that I have to remove some of it from time to time.
The trick to growing it is in placing the Tillandsia spriglets on trees that receive moderate sunlight. But even more important, is to have a lower story or bedding of plants that are watered frequently and emit moisture upward into the trees and the Spanish moss. The moss is caught between the moisture of the earthy plants and the leafy canopy of trees, and as I look up into the branches and moss, I have images of my father who wanted me to have the ambiance of his own Florida garden.
These seeds and sprigs of tiny plants are living, orant vessels of life, and they carry with themselves the places and persons from which they have been given.
Frank La Rosa
September 10, 202
