There was a good piece in the Christian Science Monitor on Friday about an intriguing artist whose paintings have been rediscovered.
The French Huguenot painter Jacques Le Moyne de Morgues (c. 1533 to 1588) was valued in his time as an artist who would record accurately what he observed....Le Moyne's botanical paintings convey the pleasure of recognition. He didn't paint rare plants. Certainly the wild daffodils he portrayed were immensely common.
...Le Moyne lived in a century when plants began to be appreciated for their appearance, and not simply for their folk-cure properties.
I, too, found myself beguiled by spring and her attendant charms as I walked a few blocks to the subway yesterday and was amazed to see tulips planted in nearly every windowbox and planter in my neighborhood. Every conceivable color and type seemed to be represented - pink, yellow, red, white, scalloped edges, rounded edges, etc. It was quite lovely, especially compared to my old neighborhood in, where else, Hell's Kitchen, where I had to keep a constant eye on my open window lest the neighbor's rottweiler come barreling in from the fire escape. Not lovely, but I could hear the foghorns of ships on the Hudson, and that was nice.
My birthday is not too far away, and my dream gift is a class at Jane Packer's Flower School. I think it sounds like a very interesting time, because everyone knows that good flowers in New York are astronomically expensive, and it makes sense to do the best you can with the sort that abound at the corner store. So, I think it will pay for itself, and I'll have a good time for a few days while I look for a new job.
One of these days, I'm going to check out the Lotus Garden, on a Sunday when it's open to the public.
Good springtime reading would be The Tulip: The Flower That Has Made Men Mad by Anna Pavord.
Always clever, The Morning News has devoted its "non-expert" columns to houseplants today.
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