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The Friday Newsletter | Daily Gardener Community
Historical Events
1852 On this day, Henry David Thoreau writes in his journal.
The maples are reddening, and birches yellowing.
The mouse-ear in the shade in the middle of the day... looks as if the frost still lay on it.
Bumblebees are on the Aster... and gnats are dancing in the air.
The Mouse Ears that Thoreau mentions in this excerpt is actually a species of forget-me-not (Myosotis laxa) known as the tufted forget-me-not, bay forget-me-not, or just the small-flower forget-me-not.
Mouse Ears like to grow in wet areas, so I can believe there was still frost on this forget-me-not when Thoreau looked at it - especially since it was probably in a low-lying or damp area.
Now Thoreau himself went into a little more detail about the Mouse Ears forget-me-not.
He wrote.
It is one of the most interesting minute flowers.
It is the more beautiful for being small and unpretending; even flowers must be modest.
Thoreau underscores this point of agreement that I have with longtime gardeners: the longer we garden, we come to appreciate some of the more subtle, more minor details in a much bigger way than we did when we were first starting out. We mature in our perspective on our garden - or on different plants or species of plants in our gardens. Our thinking evolves and changes - and what we love about our garden grows as we mature as gardeners.
1921 Death of Mary Hiester Reid (books about this person), American-born Canadian painter, and teacher.
A painter of floral still lifes, Mary was a tonalist - passionate, poetic, and subtle - and her works have been called "devastatingly expressive." In her career, Mary was both an impressionist and a realist. Mary produced over 300 oil paintings. In her prime in 1890, Mary was regarded as the most critical flower painter in Canada.
Mary often painted trios - so her paintings would feature three flowers or three trees, for example.
The author, Molly Peacock, offers additional insight into Mary's work with trios and triangulation as a reflection of what was going on in her own life. Molly points out that,
Mary and her husband lived in a loose menage with a talented younger artist named Mary Evelyn Wrinch...
Mary Evelyn Wrinch was both Mary Hiester Reid's friend and rival and 24 years her junior. When Mary died, in her will, she specified that her husband should be given to Mary Evelyn Wrinch.
Mary's death so moved the Canadian newspaperman Duncan Sutherland Macorquodale that he felt compelled to write a memorial poem in her honor. The verse refers to Mary's Wychwood home. (Wychwood was an artist's enclave of sixty homes tucked in the rolling wooded hills of the Davenport Ridge in Toronto.)
Here's an excerpt of Duncan's tribute to Mary.
Free from the thrall called life,
Palette and brush laid down;
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