Silverbells and cockle shells

This garden is not a secret, but it is on an island.

This flower is Nigella, or Love-in-the-Mist.

John and I joined the garden's caretakers in a day of volunteer labor yesterday. For lunch we walked around the cove and up a hill to the Shoals Marine Lab cafeteria. And we have the t-shirts to show for it.

Pam and her husband Mark are the official caretakers of Celia's garden. Every Tuesday they tend. Tours are Wednesday.

You still have two chances to visit this summer: Guided Tours of Celia Thaxter's Garden

It's a famous little garden because of a (locally) famous little book: AN ISLAND GARDEN, written by Celia Thaxter, friend to New England writers, poets and painters, in 1894. With illustrations by Childe Hassam.

Celia writes...

At the Isles of Shoals, among the ledges of the largest island, Appledore, lies the small garden which in the following pages I have endeavored to describe. Ever since I could remember anything, flowers have been like dear friends to me, comforters, inspirers, powers to uplift and to cheer. A lonely child, living on the lighthouse island ten miles away from the mainland, every blade of grass that sprang out of the ground, every humblest weed, was precious in my sight, and I began a little garden when not more than five years old.

Celia, on seeds...

Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful universe of God, nothing seems to me more surprising than the planting of a seed in the blank earth and result thereof. Take a Poppy seed, for instance: it lies in your palm, the merest atom of matter, hardly visible, a speck, a pin's point in bulk, but within it is imprisoned a spirit of beauty ineffable, which will break its bonds and emerge from the dark ground and blossom in a splendor so dazzling as to baffle all powers of description.

The Genie in the Arabian tale is not half so astonishing. In this tiny casket lie folded roots, stalks, leaves, buds, flowers, seed-vessels,--surpassing color and beautiful form, all that goes to make up a plant which is as gigantic in proportion to the bounds that confine it as the Oak is to the acorn.

Celia, on July and August...

Now come the most perfect days of the year, blue days, hot on the continent, but heavenly here, where the cool breeze breathes round the islands from the great expanse of whispering water. Delightful it is to lie here and rest and realize all this beauty and rejoice in all its joy! The distant coast-line is dim in soft mirage.

Last year I wrote a Sunday story: Celia's gardeners

Comments

[Ron]

Beautiful captures Amy! Photo 3 is probably my favorite. Photo 5 is excellent too. Photo 1 reminds me of an Impressionists painting. Excellent work.

I'd like to get out to the Shoals sometime with my camera. I tend to get motion sickness though. At least I did the last time (years ago) on a friends boat. Do they have a landing strip?

[Amy]

Love to see your shots of the garden and environs. No landing strip, only boat. Dramamine? Those acupressure thingies? You might try a bigger boat like the Isles of Shoals Steamship Company, on a nice calm day. You can book those trips pretty spur of the moment. They don't get you into the garden, but you could get some nice shots of the islands.

[Vicki in Michigan]

On seeds -- could not agree more.

I think it is so amazing that you can put little hard dried-up things in dirt, add some water, and get food......... When I think of some of the tomato plants I've grown, and how many tomatoes resulted from one seed...........

Great shot of the gull -- having taken many (many) blurry pics of flying gulls in the last few weeks, I'm impressed. :-)

[Amy]

And poppy seeds especially are just little black dots. The gull was a lucky shot. And there were so many of them out there.

[Terry Thornton]

Wonderful pictures (and I followed your link back to last year's article which is a good read too). Your Nigella damascena photo is super --- but I like the alternate common name better, Devil in the Bush. Now that is a common name which works on several levels! [But Love in the Mist is a sweet old-fashioned name too.]

Thanks for "taking" us on a trip to a magic island to Celia's Garden.

Terry

[Amy]

My pleasure. Terry, you obviously know something about flowers. Devil in the Bush, who knew?

[miss annie mac]

GARDEN-GASM!