{"id":1729,"date":"2025-09-17T11:29:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T15:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marygilliland.com\/new_staging\/?page_id=1729"},"modified":"2025-09-17T11:29:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T15:29:12","slug":"never-cease","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/marygilliland.com\/?page_id=1729","title":{"rendered":"Never Cease"},"content":{"rendered":"

Never Cease<\/h1>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>

Persist, I say, fellow poets: if it\u2019s worth doing, it\u2019s worth overdoing. Here we are\u2014making protest\u2014or praise\u2014or revelation\u2014while others devote themselves to making war. In a world out to maim, kill, and discourage the sensitive, how does gardening steady my head?<\/p>\n

I plant baby giants: dawn redwood! and the cucumber magnolia and tulip poplar whose 80\u2019 leafy canopies will shade someone well after I take my last walk-away. The gardens around the house and in its woods, which for decades were bless-my-mess, are coming together now. My marriage is (almost) past the days when my husband would see me still out there and call: \u201cAnyone would think that weeding is your spiritual exercise<\/span>!\u201d The life and art of insight! outdoors we expand: felling dead trees, clearing brush, dividing the perennials\u2014over time.<\/p>\n

Once-upon-a-times that we have lived are brought to mind by some featured plants. An enjambement of sorts, of our reincarnations, our reinvention of selves that are somehow also continuous. Fast growing Metasequoia<\/em>, \"Dawn<\/a>dawn redwood, the only one of its species that can prosper through the winters of NewYork State\u2019s Finger Lakes, recalls the trees of Muir Woods that as we married we believed would live near us the rest of our lives. The only other time that I\u2019ve heard trees and their earth breathe like those was on blotter acid\u2014Skinner had handed these to us the spring when we housesat Kitkitdizze for Gary, the tabs printed with a double vajra\u2014that we dropped in Minnewaska State Park Preserve while the mountain laurel was blooming, the spring after we drove back east from California.<\/p>\n

The native tulip poplar, Liriodendron tulipifera<\/em>, can be spotted here and there throughout our watershed\u2014if you look way<\/span>up. Not a common tree but unmistakable. Its large creamy \"Tulip<\/a>blossoms remind me of magnolia and it\u2019s a lucky walk when one turns up fallen on the forest floor. Three years ago I discovered that an actual magnolia variety could survive along with us! from the wildflower specialist at Cornell Botanical Gardens I brought home a grown-from-seed cucumber magnolia, Magnolia acuminata<\/em>, that will someday flower in May. Not as fragrant as the North Carolina \"Cucumber_magnolia_acuminata\"<\/a>magnolias that lined the street where we lived when Peter was in grad school, any more than our northern vines of the same name might overwhelm us with such scent as Greensboro\u2019s jasmine. But as the Irish say, it\u2019s the same but different.<\/p>\n

The whimsy and wistfulness of autumn is truly here when saffron crocus rises from the ground. Following weeks of the tinted varieties, now we are seeing the white. In Ithaca, these are the blooms that during our \u201c[S]eason of \"Bee<\/a>mists and mellow fruitfulness\u201d that convince the bees \u201cwarm days will never cease,\u201d evidenced in this week\u2019s adjoining photo.<\/p>\n

Of course I\u2019d like most of all to have a Handkerchief Tree, in order to hold close by me my most favorite city London. But the stock that gave rise to the rare specimen near Kenwood on Hampstead Heath is South African. Would it be too much to ask friends who know so much more about plants than I to find a representative variety that can withstand zero Fahrenheit??<\/p>\n

Planting an eventually towering trees takes 10 minutes. Hundreds of hundreds of 10 minutes have been required to restore the century-neglected grounds around them, labor that infuses into even the most stubborn head gentleness and confidence. I sow seeds, keep no maps, wait for nature. How many times have I bent to unknown flora that pop up: Want more shade? Want more sun?
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014MG, 19 October 2022<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never Cease Persist, I say, fellow poets: if it\u2019s worth doing, it\u2019s worth overdoing. Here we are\u2014making protest\u2014or praise\u2014or revelation\u2014while others devote themselves to making war. In a world out to maim, kill, and discourage the sensitive, how does gardening steady my head? I plant baby giants: dawn redwood! and the cucumber magnolia and tulip poplar whose 80\u2019 leafy canopies … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-blank-4.php","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1729","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marygilliland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marygilliland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marygilliland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marygilliland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marygilliland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marygilliland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1732,"href":"https:\/\/marygilliland.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1729\/revisions\/1732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marygilliland.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}