Fleur-de-Edges

My apologies to Kevin Costner (and the real-life inspiration for A Field of Dreams) but I’ve learned my own lesson: If you fill it with water, they will come.

One morning, it was a dragonfly who skimmed by the bird bath at least a dozen times.  He hasn’t landed…yet…that I know of. 

A “ding,” and a message on my phone. A clip from Classic Peanuts. Snoopy, decked out in swim trunks, runs across the yard, does a flip, and ends up in the bird bath. As his head pops out of the water, it is covered with tiny yellow birds. 

 “How was I to know Woodstock was having a swim party?” the cartoon reads.

My brother-in-law, Tim-the-poet, is CEO of my blog fan club.  He often sends a comment and this time it featured Snoopy and Woodstock. 

Then, I spotted my first Pleasant Gap goldfinch. Woodstock? 

But the focus of this blog entry is switching from garden features to garden edges. 

Back in the winter, I was watching a gardening Zoom class and the woman leading the program talked about the importance of edges.  Normally, when I plan a garden, I think about shape and size, the fertility of the soil, and the plants to fill it.   Edges.  The concept hadn’t occurred to me.

So, I started scouting around. I went to a landscape supply company but the stones and pavers were too blocky for my tiny home and yard, too heavy (for my car to carry and me to place), and too pricy. 

Last summer I used leftover tiles from my parents’ atrium flooring—aqua-colored hexagons made in Mexico—for garden stepping stones. If I gathered them, I thought, I could make a border edge for my shade garden.  Almost.  I ran short, so I started the tiles on each outer edge and moved toward the middle.  There was a 4-foot gap where they didn’t reach, so I filled in with small stones I collected while creating the garden. 

After several weeks, I noticed that it was much easier to mow the lawn along the edged shade garden.  I really did need to edge the other two.

I can’t remember where I was, but I overheard a fellow talking to his daughter, saying he was going to look for a doorknob at the ReStore. Light bulb moment. 

The Habitat for Humanity ReStore for Centre County is just a few miles from my house in Bellefonte.  The store receives household donations and leftover building supplies from contractors. Then the items are re-sold.  Proceeds go toward building affordable homes in the Centre Region.  Perhaps I could find tiles for my garden edges and support a good cause.  

Sure enough, there were two shelves filled with boxes of flooring or wall tiles.  I found a box of rustic tan 6”x6” tiles for $10 and decided to give them a try. The next day, I laid them out, scraping back the mulch and tucking them under mounding thyme along the edge of my elderberry garden. Success! 

The next week, I returned to the Re-Store.  The 12” tiles seemed too big and there weren’t any 6”.  So, I settled for a box of glossy gray tiles, 4”x4”, for $7.  Within an hour or so, my third garden was edged.

Maybe it’s time to put some edges in your life.  Laurie Lynch

Fleur-de-Al

On Monday, I received a packet from Belgium. Marina had addressed and stamped envelopes containing Sweet Baby James’ birth announcement for friends and family on this side of the Atlantic. As I took them to Lemont Post Office, my heart soared.

Marina had chosen a postcard with Keith Haring’s Radiant Baby image for the announcement.

On Tuesday, I received an email for a memorial service for Al Haring. He died July 22 at age 85. My heart shattered. 

Now, on Wednesday, I’m trying to put down in words what friendship and community mean, and how they carry across the globe and through the generations.

I never met the pop artist Keith Haring who died of AIDS in 1990.  His playful graffiti in NYC and murals throughout the world made him famous.  That he grew up in Kutztown became very evident after we moved there in 1997.   I’m not sure when or how I met his father, Al.  

Al and Joan Haring and our family were “country neighbors” on Eagle Point Road, just outside of Kutztown, in Maxatawny Township. Al and I had a mutual friend, Dick Pudliner. Our homes were a good twisty, narrow mile apart, but our paths often crossed—and kept crossing after I moved to State College.

He and Joan parked their pickup at Fleur-de-Lys, unloaded their bikes from the back and rode on Hottenstein, a much safer pedal than EPR.  Al recruited me to help with the vegetable and scarecrow contests at Kutztown Fair. His brother was Marina’s English teacher and his granddaughter was a classmate of Richard’s. 

Richard played Little League not far from Keith Haring’s red metal sculpture in Kutztown Park and both Marina and Richard created “Keith Haring-inspired artwork” as part of their middle school upbringing. We toured the Kutztown Historical Society’s former Kutztown Junior High where as an adult Keith drew murals on the chalkboards to be encased in plexiglass to preserve them.  When Richard went to Brazil as a Rotary Exchange Student, Al made sure he had a backpack full of KH pop art buttons to share.

After I moved from Kutztown, Al and I kept in touch.

When I visited a friend in San Francisco, I came across a copy of Architectural Digest with Brooke Shields and a “Haring Heart” on the cover. I sent it to Al and Joan.  When I saw a KH poster in the Café de Halles in Brussels, I sent a photo. I did the same when we spotted another in a shop in Venice. He’d send email photos for Christmas and Valentine’s Day, simply signed “Al”.   A rose. His daughter shoveling their long drive. Cookie cutters in flour on a wooden board. Deer in a snow-covered field. I sent him a photo of Marina and her Belgian family visiting the KH exhibit at the BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels.  Once, he sent a map showing me how to get to KH’s mural “Tuttomundo” (All World) if I made it to Pisa.  Not yet…

In emails we talked a lot about gardening, “cutting and pulling”. He lamented his ash trees dying from emerald ash borer, but he looked on the bright side—stacks of firewood to keep the house cozy during the winter.  Al explained how his family would keep alive the tradition of singing The Twelve Days of Christmas together but apart during Covid.  Not on Zoom, he wrote, but another “platform” his great-granddaughter suggested.  “That’s why the next generation of grandkids are called Greats.”  He talked about his chemotherapy. 

And he gave me advice: “I hope you are able to keep your feet wet and hands full of dirt—you just wouldn’t be Laurie if not.” Thanks, Al.  Laurie Lynch