Perspective is All by Peter Mansweat

by Peter Mansweat

Guerrant Cabin Wildflower Garden

The wildflower garden at the Guerrant Cabin on the grounds of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum qualifies as such because it has flowers and it is, certainly, wild. Right now, a stand of improbably tall goldenrod bends and sways over the front south side like the world’s worst cowlick.  Behind the goldenrod, in violation of good gardening principles, a shorter, but no less vigorous swath of Texas red sage flushes in and out of its brilliant orange-red bloom in weekly cycles, rubbing elbows and knees with a wide patch of copper canyon daisies which, despite their name, is a fall-blooming member of the marigold family, invigorated by the recent rain and cool nights, whose flush of yellow flowers, once they start, seems to go on for weeks and weeks.  These are just the most prominent (fall) plants on the south side jumble of about forty different species in various states of disarray – bloom, post-bloom, seed head, rosette, and even, already, eyeballing next spring, seedlings in germination.

The north side of the garden is a lot less chaotic, mostly because of a recent, hurried spate of plant culling, done not for appearance’s sake, but to give the seeds from last year’s poppies and larkspur a bit of breathing – or germination – room this fall.  Even so, the north side has its happy unruliness – purple perilla, whose blooms are a shade lighter than its leaves, another stand of copper canyon daisies, a yellow Nacogdoches rose that simply won’t stop blooming, and a spreading, semi-weeping, laurapetalum  whose fall foliage is as deep and dramatic as any small tree you can think of.

Naturally, the brick and sand walk that splits the garden from the sidewalk to the porch is overgrown with plants that, evidently, prefer brick, mortar and sand to the composted soil of the garden.  Moss, rose, low, tiny and bright, and crunchy underfoot;  stray rosettes of next spring’s ox-eye daisy and daisy flea-bane;  the varied, bright, pearl-like seed heads of jewel –of-opar, and two clumps of blue mist-flower, which have been blooming since early August.

It is a curious thing that many people, tempted to take a closer look, will step off into the garden where people don’t belong and plants do, but then, on the brick wall, they will twist and tip-toe and contort themselves where plants don’t really belong and people do.

At any rate, and from any direction you look at it, the Guerrant Cabin garden is a jumble, if not a jungle of unruly happy plants whose common characteristics are not graduated heights, contrasting foliage or complementary colors, but rather, toughness and a Darwinian desire to thrive, to dominate, to propagate.  From our visitors this garden has received about equal amounts of praise and criticism, but the most cogent remarks I have (over)heard came from an elderly woman who, strolling past the garden that was obviously not her cup of tea, turned to her companion and said, “well, I suppose at least the bees must like it.”

Bingo.  Perspective is all.  The bees do like it. So do the moths, the dragonflies, the swallowtails and monarch butterflies, the hummingbirds, the seed-eating and worm hunting mockingbirds and thrashers and warblers, and , of course, the chickens.  From their perspective this isn’t a garden- it’s a smorgasbord, open 24-7.

The Texas red-sage is for hummingbirds what bacon is for Homer Simpson.  I sat and watched a rub-throat and a bumble-bee in aerial combat for fifteen minutes. In the midst of a thousand sage blooms, they fought over one, like toddlers over the last chocolate chip cookie;  chest bumping, figure-eighting, engaging in flying maneuvers an air-force fighter pilot could only dream of.

The goldenrod is a butterflies dream flower.  If watching a swallowtail’s Mobius strip-like flight pattern around the bouncing head of a blooming goldenrod on a blue October day doesn’t take one out of one’s self, then nothing can.  

Honeybees run up and down the spikes of blue-spire salvia, and perilla, sucking nectar, spreading pollen.

There’s a family of young chickens who have more or less moved into the garden, snatching crickets, and picking the seed heads off the stem of the jewel-of-opar, which grow, conveniently, chicken high.

If it is the curse of our modern life that the world is too much with us, there is also, still, the blessing of human character that we can at least imagine a different mode, a different perspective.  For the hurried and the harried may I recommend a few moments on the porch of the Guerrant Cabin, cell phones off, earplugs out.  Weekend mornings are particularly nice.  Watch the dance of the pollinators, listen to the mockingbird’s song, the cooing and clucking of the chickens at their breakfast.  Bring your own snack.  Fifteen minutes - the world will still be waiting for you afterwards, but you may see it in a little better perspective.