Aunt Elva's Garden
summer of 1973 traveling around Europe and I fell in love with the gardens of Versailles. My first love was Versailles, not really Aunt Elva's garden.
I moved back to Oregon in the Summer of 1978 and soon began to create my own garden. I call the style of my garden "rustic formal" and I don't see many echoes from Aunt Elva's garden in it, but someone else might. The only echo that I am aware of is my fondness for arches. Whenever I pass though an arch I am reminded of Aunt Elva's garden; I am reminded of a time when garden paths seemed magical.
Aunt Elva lived to be 98 years old. When she died, she was blind, deaf, and crippled. Aunt Elva's brain functioned better than the rest of her body; she was very aware of how miserable she was. Aunt Elva's final humiliation was to be declared indigent because all of her money had gone to pay medical bills; she hated that. Death was a release.
I don't like to think of how Aunt Elva's life ended. I prefer to remember Aunt Elva in her big white house with its beautiful garden.
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