Friday, February 04, 2005
Broken pots will be a thing of beauty
Libba Wolfe
Libba Wolfe's column appears twice monthly in Extra.
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My Aunt Carolyn was famous on Daddy's side of the family for her chocolate cake and for being the only neatnik in a large, messy family. When her husband died and she got control of the shed out back, she sorted through everything and piled it neatly by the curb for trash day.
My daddy drove around the block, carted it all home and crammed it in his shed. It's been sitting there for 20 years.
You never know when you're going to need a worn-out O ring or a jagged warped piece of wood, right? If not for a repair job, at least to prop up whatever's broken, right?
As we prepared to move last year, I forced myself to get rid of lots of those odd things that collect at the back of drawers and closets and in the corners of the garage. I couldn't tell you now what was in those piles, but I bet I'll need whatever it was. It was gut-wrenching to watch all that good stuff go.
A friend told me recently that Frank Lloyd Wright said you should keep only those things that are useful or beautiful. Everything else should go.
Sounds reasonable till you start thinking about "useful." Did he mean useful right now? Or someday? Or maybe?
For years I've been tossing pieces of broken flower pots into a box. When it came time to move, I moved them myself because, well, who has a husband who understands paying to haul broken flower pots?
Last fall at the new house I started a path 'round back. First I laid down some large pieces of slate, then I filled in the blanks with those terra cotta shards. I can't wait to put in some creeping thyme this spring. I think it will be beautiful.
This was not a project that involved digging or measuring or levels. Everything I used was broken or leftover from other projects. I'm mighty glad I saved them.
For 30 years I've saved a set of dessert plates that are cracked and chipped. Every time I look at them I think of the friend who gave them to me. Everything about her was outrageous ... her clothes, her dirty jokes, her appetite for M&Ms.
Now it's time, finally, to bring out those plates, break them and add them to my pathway. Or maybe I'll do a mosaic pot for a most outrageous container plant combination. Janie is gone now, but those plates have got to contain her laughing mojo and, you know, that's always useful.
Last month I saw "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" exhibit at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk. These quilts are not precisely matched, geometric Amish quilts. They are pieced from stained, worn work clothes and roadside rags. They were not made as sentimental keepsakes. There were made by the daughters and granddaughters of Mississippi slaves to keep their families warm.
Those women made every scrap useful, and they made quilts as beautiful as anything I've ever seen. A quilt made of worn-out bib overalls tells a story about the man who wore them and a story about the woman who saved them and made art.
This is the month when we're all planning our gardens and marking the catalogues for the new things we want to try. I know there are some folks out there who follow their plans and who plant only things that "go with" their other plants. Their borders are never messy. I'll bet their houses are easy to dust, too.
Not me. I want the old-fashioned daffodils that aren't the flashiest but they remind me of a day spent riding around in the country with my brother on a ditch-bank bulb heist. I have piles of rocks and shells that transport me to Emerald Isle or Lake Superior or Point Reyes. My grandmother's rose bush, cuttings from friends, odds and ends - I save it all.
So I plan to snuggle up by the fire all month and read my garden rule books and learn all I can. Then I'll be the one who decides what's useful and beautiful. Everything I plant will have a story.
My cousin Carol has her mother's famous chocolate cake recipe. Better yet, she even has her mother's battered old cake pan. It still has Aunt Carolyn's cake-making mojo, and that is a useful, beautiful thing.
