Curating Your Garden

 

A new word has entered my gardening vocabulary: Curated. I have a curated garden. Expensive gardeners are now called curators of the gardens they attend to. The word "curate" means to select, organize, and look after the items in a collection. Curate also implies that my plants are swish; they are cool; they are "in." 

My plants don't know or care whether they are "in" or not. They are simply happy to grow, unless conditions are not right.

It's true that i aim for an aesthetically pleasing garden--blues and yellows together, silvers and pinks. At the same time, i realize the impermanence of my entire undertaking. Twenty years from now, very little of "my" garden will remain. My collections will scatter and be overgrown and replaced by something or someone else.

Every curated collection is impermanent.

And so are we.

In the Pink

"In the Pink" is the theme of the Smith College Bulb Show, with the centerpiece of the show being entirely pink.

The word "pink" comes from Dianthus, commonly called pinks. And they were called "pinks" due to their pinked edges (think: pinking shears).

Dianthus a.k.a Pinks

We no longer use the word "pinked," but the noun "pink" is part of our daily vocabulary.

Shakespeare first used "pink" in the sense of "the best of," as "the pink of health" or "tickled pink."

The best qualities are the Divine Abodes, also called the Heavenly Houses or the Sublime States:

1. Loving-Kindness
2. Compassion
3. Appreciative Joy or Gladness
4. Equanimity

I've never thought of these Sublime States as pink before, but why not? They put us in the pink of mental health and happiness.

I was tickled pink to be at the Bulb Show with some of my best girlfriends.

Tickled pink--another word for joy.

Photos from wiseacre-gardens.com and parkwholesaleplants.com