We took a very quick trip this weekend to New York State for a family wedding in Saratoga Springs and stopped at my brother’s house in Rhinebeck on the way back. The weather was midsummer dramatic: dark thunderstorms on the way there and back and hot, hazy and humid in between. The bride was the picture of cool nonetheless, and the wedding was held in the groom’s backyard, which features one of the most spectacular gardens I have ever seen: a powerful mix of the most colorful of perennials and the most architectural of vegetables! And so very well-tended by the groom’s father: I came home a bit ashamed of my weedy patch and more than a bit envious of all those vegetables. Though I’m a notorious non-eater of green things I am always struck by how beautiful they are as plants, and wish I had more land so I could grow some (to look at). In my urban garden, I grow perennials and herbs together because this is what the colonials (and their predecessors) did: in much the same way this Saratoga garden has integrated raised vegetable beds with surrounding perennials. Then there is lawn–which is where the wedding tent was, right on the edge of the garden, or rather in the garden. I’ve been to many garden weddings before, but this was a GARDEN wedding. We drove south on the way back and stopped at my brother’s house for lunch and saw more New York bounty on the way and when we got there–including a transplanted Massachusetts white hydrangea from my mother’s family house (why don’t I have any????)–which seems to be doing particularly well in New York. Once we were on the Pike driving back to Salem I recalled a very distant memory from my early childhood in Strafford, Vermont: there was a well-established farmer who suddenly and inexplicably (to me, who could not imagine any place more perfect than Vermont) sold his farm and moved to New York State. I asked either my mother or my father (I can’t remember which) why? And they said: the farms are so much larger in New York, and there is just MORE: more land, more crops, BIGGER vegetables. I am definitely paraphrasing here but that was the gist of it. I remember that at that moment “New York” became something different than, or additional to, the city, for me, and associated with bounty.
An amazing Saratoga Springs garden (encompassing a wedding celebration), including weird-looking brussel sprouts, and a flourishing white hydrangea (the best kind) in Rhinebeck:
