Today, the gardenia

The secret garden. (A favorite space from the OTHER house I lived in in Florida. c. LHMcBride 2013)

I have always loved gardenias. When I was a child, a popular perfume was called Jungle Gardenia. By the time I graduated from high school in the US, I had a practical reason to love the scent, as well; it was so strong, it covered up body odor. Really? Well, it's like this. My boyfriend's best friend was dating a girl we called Dirty Diane because she smelled. When the boy asked me what sort of corsage I thought he might get for her for the prom, I immediately answered "Gardenia." It worked. To a point.

When I bought a house in Florida eons ago, it came with two 30-foot mango trees that tossed the ripe fruit down to us. So much, in fact, that we and ten families couldn't eat it all, so we gave most of it away to an old man who sold the mangoes from a cart west of I-95--which means he sold them in the poor section of town and made some money for himself, sorely needed. He just came into the garden every other day and took what he wanted, leaving us two for ourselves.

We also had a key lime tree that produced fruit about nine months of the year. I made many, many key lime pies, even after giving away a good number of the limes.

And we had a huge, vibrant, dark green, venerable gardenia bush. It had to be ten feet in diameter, and was at least 6 feet tall. I didn't know what it was when we bought the house, as it wasn't in bloom right then. But it was never in any danger from me. First, I don't like insects and snakes, or the bufo toads that inhabited the man-made pond, so I was unlikely to mess around in the garden to begin with and, second, the plantings were so lush and beautiful, there was really no need to do anything at all to them, except the odd trimming and dead-leaf clearing.

When that plant began to bloom, it was as if the gods had answered another prayer. I would pick some gardenias for the house, but mainly, I would stand in front of that bush  almost worshipping it as I drank the scent in for as long as I felt it was seemly to do so. I was alone; the garden was very private. But still, one feels like a cosmic nut sometimes when indulging the senses too deeply.

We sold the house, after only a year, and moved back to New York City. That move remains one of the most painful of the far too many moves in my adult life. I was glad to leave behind the changes in the neighborhood, the precursor to turning it first into a raging slum and later resurrecting it as a business district, with all those lovely old Florida homes turned into doctor's offices and insurance company locations. (The transformation was complete when I revisited the spot about five years ago, and the lovely white clapboard house had been painted a corporate, ugly brown and the front garden paved over.)

But I was immensely sad to leave the gardenia...and the mangoes and key limes. And the breezy Florida room. But mainly the gardenias.

When we moved to England from Maryland three years ago, I left behind my lilac bush--my second-favorite flower--which had finally gotten to the stage of producing abundant blooms. Naturally, we have planted two behind our house in Cornwall, the largest producing--after two years--a small bouquet. I had no gardenia inside or out in Maryland; the winters are too cold for them to survive. And I just didn't get around to finding an indoor one.

Here, in Cornwall, I have a gardenia plant in bloom in the house. It got leggy three winters back when we lived in a rented house while our new one was being finished. But it produces tons of flowers twice a year anyway. It's blooming now. And yes, I stand in front of it at its perch in the window next to the french doors (it FILLS the window) and drink in the scent. I'm thinking of putting it outdoors in a very big pot after this blossom time is done. I'm also thinking of adding a glass greenhouse to the back garden before winter, so I can move it into shelter to winter over. It's really too big for indoors, but I'll be darned if I lose another specimen of my favorite flower.

Here's the church, see the sheeple....

Church and its sheeple (LHM, 2013)

Apparently, I have developed a "thing" about goofy sheep doing goofy things. That's not why we went to the little village of St. Ewe on Sunday, but it tied in nicely with a goofy sheep thing I had drawn a couple of days earlier.

Naturally, St. Ewe has nothing whatever to do with sheep. The name of the place in Cornish is Lannewa, rather close to ewe at the end, I think. And there is, supposedly, an actual St. Ewe about whom, says Wikipedia, little is known. There are, as it happens, lots of Cornish churches named after saints about whom little is known. And those named after saints whose fate is known...sheesh. For example, there's the Roman Catholic Church of St. Cuthbert Mayne in Launceston. Poor fellow was hanged, drawn and quartered after the Reformation because he would not disavow the Roman Catholic Church. There is some indication that he was at least unconscious for the really vile parts, the drawing and quartering, although hangees were usually taken down while still alive and conscious to suffer greatly and repent them of all their sins.

That church is just up the road from St. Stephens, C of E. St. Stephen didn't have a very lovely end either; he was stoned to death in front of Saul of Tarsus, later known as St. Paul...who also probably suffered martyrdom, although there is no proof of that. Maybe he got lucky. Maybe his fame from writing all those epistles saved him, much as fame saves criminals from harsh punishment in the modern world. I mean, look at all the philandering politicians who don't even suffer a slap on the wrist in the UK or the US because their fame buys them a pass.

But back to the elusive St. Ewe. Even the online Catholic Encyclopedia has nothing about him. Or her. But nonetheless, there is a Norman cruciform church in the village dedicated to St. Ewe, with additions in the 14th and 15th centuries. It is surrounded by a cemetery (of course), but it also offers a walking path through a lovely, damp wood, complete with causeway over the deepest parts until the public footpath opens onto a farmer's field.

We wandered a bit in the church grounds after lunch at The Crown, where the landlord kindly allowed Brownie inside even though the pub was full and there were only tables available in the carpeted dining room. He said if we'd keep her right next to us where she could sit on a bit of stone floor, that would be fine. And it was. She was surprisingly good. Not having been raised from a pup as a pub-going dog, she has had to learn the etiquette in her old age.

Brownie under a table at The Jamaica Inn the first winter we lived here, 2009.

Life plans that go awry

Flowers, Paris (c. Laura Harrison McBride, 2013)

This morning at breakfast, my husband and I began talking about life plans. Well, my life plans anyway. His life plan has never waivered; he wanted to work in electronics, went to school courtesy of Cable & Wireless, worked for them in Yemen and the Gambia, saw the writing on the wall, became a telecoms engineer/programmer...and still is, a few decades and a couple of continents later.

I, on the other hand, wanted to be an actress. Then I wanted to be a novelist. Then I wanted to be a writer. Then I wanted to be a psychologist. Then I wanted to be a linguist. Then I wanted to be a journalist. Then I wanted to be an artist again. Then I wanted to be an interior designer. Oops....back to artist. Then I wanted to own an advertising agency (did that.) Then I wanted to train horses (did that). Then I wanted to keep being a writer and be an artist...and move first to Paris and, when I began to become feeble, move to Ireland to die.

Lucid dreaming

As it happens, I married a Brit, moved to Cornwall, and continued on as a writer and artist. All the other desires are happily of blessed memory. Sort of. Things you've wanted to be and things that you actually did remain a part of you. For example, imagine my shock when, in my 40s, I did some lucid dreaming asking for what to do next; I was then a freelance journalist and learning to train horses. The answer that came to me in the night: Work in theatre.

"WHAT!  Come ON. Are you kidding? Do you know how OLD I am?" I asked the provider of answers all these questions and got no reply. But I for sure was not going to up sticks, move to New York and hope to go on casting calls, despite my undergraduate degree that was split between English Lit. and Theatre.

So I figured lucid dreaming didn't work. But then, ta da, I got a call from the editor of a newspaper who wanted a theatre reviewer. No kidding! So I talked with the man, wrote a sample review, and got hired. I stayed three years, a longevity record for me as an employee; it was the best gig I've ever had. (PS, that man is still a great editor, now in Johnson City, Tennessee, USA.)

Getting psychedelic over pizza?

I've never lost my love for Paris. Well, not exactly. Of all my travels (not that there are so many), I have had both the best and worst in Paris. The worst is the most recent. My own fault: NEVER go to Paris during Christmas week. Still, I hunger for the beauty of Paris, the street scenes so imbued with the loveliness of life--even on an ordinary street such as the one in the painting above--that Paris remains the apotheosis of all things wonderful, regardless of what small miseries one might have experienced there.

My life plan at the moment doesn't include a trip to Paris immediately. I've sort of been entranced by the descriptions of Neapolitan pizza in Eat Pray Love, and my stomach may insist on a return to Italy...maybe Rome and Naples, just as in Eat Pray Love.

I don't think I'll go on to India, though. But then...life plans have a habit of changing, I do love Indian food, I have a personal guru (Hi, Arthur!), and I studied the anthropology of India at university. That course was taught by Allan D. Coult, a colleague of Timothy Leary of LSD fame. (When I looked him up, I found he died only a couple of years after I took his course, and he really wasn't very old.) The course wasn't so much about India, really, as about Coult's beliefs about the interplay between what one eats and what one is. But I digress....

Oh. Well, actually, I'm finished. And dinner needs to be made, dog needs to be fed, cat needs to be located and locked in for the night....

Capitalism for artists: It's not what you think

 The quintessential opera for starving artists. (Wiki Commons)

Here are two of capitalism's favorite sayings:


There's a buyer for every product.

If you build a better mousetrap, you will prosper.

For artists and artisans, both of those statements are wrong. Totally, profoundly wrong. And yet, art buyers seem to want to hold artists to them, demanding refunds even when the art they purchased was delivered EXACTLY as advertised, on time and at a low price.

First, the universe of buyers for art has shrunk along with the economy in general; in fact, it would be reasonable to guess that the art market has shrunk faster than other markets. When people wonder if they can put food on the table, they will not hang new pictures on their walls. And in case you hadn't noticed, patronage by royalty and the wealthy is a thing of the past, as well.  I may be wrong, but I have heard of  no royals having a writer, artist or composer at their beck and call for a nice yearly stipend. No Antonio Salieris*, in short, need apply.

Second, in art, there is no such thing as a better mousetrap. Each mousetrap is different, unique, original. 

Getting cold cash for warm art; How?

So how, then, is an artist or artisan to entice such buyers as are left to trade some cold cash for warm art? Advertising.

Few artists can afford a huge roadside billboard; few can even afford a few daily sponsored posts on Facebook. But most can afford to put a little soft-sell on their works someplace. Photographers can add their website to greeting cards and calendars they sell, if not to the bespoke or limited edition photographs. So can graphic artists. Painters would have a tougher time adding it to their work itself, but that's not to stop them signing the work boldly and recognizably and including a card with contact information in every sale.

One's first customer is one's best customer, so another capitalist saying goes. This one is at least partly true of art, right up the the time the fashions change or an artist's first collectors are fully stocked on things to display in their home or office. But with luck, they will have sent one of the artist's cards to a friend, who might also become a customer. Or a regular buyer might show a painter's work to friends who would also like to own some.

Key to all of it is letting buyers know your contact information, these days most usually a website where potential buyers can view more of the artist's work, and to which they can refer friends, and on which will be full disclosure about how to commission or buy the artist's work.

How does this REALLY work?

Today, a friend of mine refunded a teeny, tiny payment--2 quid--that a buyer had paid for two postcards because--gasp!--the photographer had included her website information on the cards. She had--in big, bold, capital letters--told buyers via her sales website that the cards came with the website information printed on them.

My friend could have kept the measly 2 quid and let the buyer go scratch. But one can't do that, either; while few people publicize artists for how good or accommodating they are, you can be darn sure they'll publicize the artist as a grasping moron over a 2 quid purchase, all over town and beyond. It's the nature of the beast--humans in general and chintzy art-buyer wannabes in particular.

Is there a solution to this? I'm clueless. I can't imagine it getting any better now that governments worldwide are further devaluing art and artists by withdrawing arts funding from schools.

A friend in the US told me two days ago that in the town where he lives, shop fronts are either art galleries or cute restaurants...for a month at a time, until the latest one goes belly up for lack of business. He is a Juillliard educated pianist and conductor whose last symphony gig went the way of many smaller symphonies as Bush's debacle began to roost. Fortunately, he also has an MBA, so he has gotten a new gig running a foundation to fund arts in the schools. In short, he's digging money out of the pockets of individuals a buck at a time so local kids will know crap from Crayola.

He needs to be making music happen, not dunning already strapped people for money so their kids--the same kids the schools are supposed to educate--won't end up clueless about the arts. People who are clueless about the arts, in a very bone-deep way, would naturally begrudge artists both the right to advertise their work and the right to be paid for it. Like every other sort of business in the world. Like that towering imbecile who spent two whole quid--TWO WHOLE QUID--for two postcards and then wanted her money back because she had failed to read the not-so-fine print telling her what the cards would be like, in addition, of course, to the full-color photograph of said cards. Unbelievable.

My photographer friend is at the threshold of taking a large bottle of Fukitol, but I trust she won't. She's too good for that...although what we are all going to do if a few of the richest 100, whom Oxfam this week said could solve poverty four times over with their wealth alone, don't start greasing the wheels of commerce...I have no idea.



*Salieri, Mozart's mentor, was supported mainly by the Hapsburg rulers of Vienna.

Oak Apple Day

Oak apples on the forest floor, c. Laura Harrison McBride 2013

There's one thing one notices fairly soon after moving to the UK: the place is a feast of small celebrations.

Today, for instance--May 29--is Oak Apple Day. Who even knew there was such a thing as oak apples? As a horsewoman, I had heard of road apples all right; those lumps of digested grass and oats left behind by horses. Love apples, too, are familiar. They are simply tomatoes, or as the French call them, pomme d'amour after the supposedly aphrodisiacal powers of the fruit.

But oak apple day. Different. Sort of like the unicorn? No. According to Mike Williams, PhD, "Oak Apple Day or Royal Oak Day is a festival celebrated in Britain on 29th May to mark the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, after the interregnum of Oliver Cromwell’s Republic. Its roots, however, like those of the oak itself, might go far deeper."

Williams' blog, Prehistoric Shamanism, gives quite a complete history of the celebration as well as the older understandings of the meanings of oak, particularly in Druidry. The word druid might have been derived, he notes, from language for "lover of the oak."

I'm fairly certain I was born a Druid. When I was seven, we lived in a flat in a borough of New York City known as Queens. There were a few parks nearby, one named Farmer's Oval in fact, but most of the trees lining the streets were maples and catalphas. I knew all about pollynoses--or as the rest of the world calls them, helicopters--and happily peeled apart the nut and stuck the green leafy wings to my nose along with all the other neighbourhood kids. But I had never seen an oak.

The lot my parents bought for the construction of our new home was on eastern Long Island, about an hour from NYC . It was virgin land covered with scrubby oaks.

Long Island is little more than a glorified, 115 mile by 25 mile sand bar. This was both good and bad, in my childhood opinion. I loved being able to go to the beach often; I loathed the abundant ticks that had been dispossessed when the woods were felled all over the island, and deer herds decimated.


My first visit to the lot for our new home was when my father went out to mark the trees he wanted left behind by the bulldozers. I was so taken with the acorns that had fallen everywhere that I gathered a bucket of them to bring home. I asked my mother for a box to put them in; I kept them under my bed and looked at them occasionally.

And then the demanding life of a seven-year-old intervened. There were dance classes, and homework, and visits to Grandma's house, and treks with Grandma for ice-cream sundaes, and my new colouring book.....So the acorns were left alone in their dark casket for quite a while.

When I finally remembered them, several seasons had passed. Indeed, it was almost time to move to the new house. I pulled out the box and opened it up, and there, crawling everywhere, were little white worms.

Ick. I don't doubt that I screamed. I also don't doubt that my mother screamed when she came running; bugs and icky things were not her strong suit. She threw it all away, made me wash my hands and probably the rest of me as well since she was also a bit of a germ freak and wouldn't have wanted me to catch "acorn bug disease." And so ended my love affair with acorns.

Frankly, I still don't like them much. OK. The little hat thingies are cute. But all I can really see when I encounter an acorn is a split shell with a semi-opaque wiggly thing coming out of it.

I might, however, come to love Oak Apple Day, providing no one reminds me too often that oak apples are merely the place a certain kind of wasp creates to hatch its disgusting larvae.