C'est Inspiré is simply that - what is inspiring. Where the words end, images continue to speak. Seeing all that is around us, we seek some aspect of something that is life enhancing... something that you would like to be reminded of - to revisit. Something to capture and bring into your world, not leave behind... . That is why I take a camera everywhere; have spent countless hours organizing images in scrapbooks and pouring over them later to revisit the place, the people, the memory.
So, C'est Inspiré may be a single photo - or it may be 50, it may mean one thing to me, another to you - the meaning isn't important. Did it inspire? Did it make you smile? Did it bring back a pleasant memory? One or all of the above will do.
During a brief period of his life, the legendary art historian Bernard Berenson kept diaries where he wrote about how to see - and what he saw. These diaries were published under the title The Passionate Sightseer and edited by Raymund Mortimer.
Anyone, anywhere, anytime can be a passionate sightseer - just look.
If Thomas Jefferson were to walk the grounds of Monticello today, he would feel at home in the 1,000-foot terraced vegetable garden. Extensively and painstakingly restored under Peter J. Hatch’s brilliant direction, Jefferson’s unique vegetable garden now boasts the same medley of plants he cultivated in the early nineteenth century. The garden is a living expression of Jefferson’s genius and his distinctly American attitudes. Jefferson’s impact on the culinary, garden and landscape history of the United States continues to the present day.
Peter J. Hatch is Director of Gardens and Grounds for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, where he has been responsible for the maintenance, interpretation and restoration of the 2,400-acre landscape at Monticello since 1977. He has managed several major restoration projects, and in 1987 established the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants. Peter Hatch is the author or editor of several books about the gardens of Monticello, and has served as an adviser and source of plants for Mrs. Obama’s White House kitchen garden, which features a discrete section that honors Thomas Jefferson.
Graced with nearly 200 full-color illustrations, A Rich Spot of Earth is the first book devoted to all aspects of the Monticello vegetable garden, and Hatch guides us from the asparagus and artichokes first planted in 1770 through the horticultural experiments of Jefferson’s retirement years (1809–1826).
Did you know…?
Jefferson experimented with over 330 varieties and some 99 species of vegetables.
Jefferson enjoyed a tradition of competing with some of his neighbors to raise spring peas. Whoever harvested the first spring pea hosted a community dinner that included a feast on the winning pea crop.
Unique among Virginia gardeners of his day, Jefferson cultivated a roster of unfamiliar species now taken for granted, including tomatoes, okra, eggplant, lima beans, peanuts and peppers.
Anticipating healthy living advice that would be extolled two centuries later, Jefferson wrote, “I have lived temperately, eating little animal food, and that…as a condiment for the vegetables which constitute my principal diet.”
Jefferson documented nearly six decades of horticultural triumphs and failures in his Garden Book, a diary he maintained from 1766 to 1824. This rich record made possible the most accurate early American garden restoration ever undertaken.
Peter Hatch’s A Rich Spot of Earth and Thomas Jefferson’s Garden Book can both be found online through monticellocatalog.org
May 10, 2012
Annie Leibovitz’s new book Pilgrimage is different from the rest. No portraits, just objects, rooms and landscapes. She traveled around the United States capturing subjects because they meant something to her, they intrigued her. Her first place was Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts that she photographed with a small digital camera. As her project continued, she moved up to more professional equipment and even brought along an assistant. It is quite an experience to see through Leibovitz’s eyes as she passes through the greenhouse where Virginia Woolf wrote her novels, where Thomas Jefferson tended his vegetables at Monticello and Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond. In the end, Leibovitz scales down these larger than life figures to humanize them and provide intimate details into their past lives – a book without people, yet the human touch is all around.
All photography from Pilgrimage.
December 28, 2011
Some excellent books to gift this holiday season…
The Blackberry Farm Cookbook. By Sam Beall.
I have heard many wonderful things about Blackberry Farm although I have not been there,
buying this cookbook gets me a step closer…
Southern Biscuits. By Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart.
If your mother didn’t teach you, or your Home Ec. teacher didn’t drill it into you ( like mine did!). “Proper biscuits do NOT have tunnels! ” Therefore, if yours do….you need this book., but besides that, there are all sorts of variations on the yummy biscuit theme.
French Fries. By Zac Williams.
The essential french fry…baked or fried…and NOT just potatoes…….parsnips, asparagus and onions too…
December 7, 2011
I could not wait to get these fall titles featuring three of my favorite dames. The long-time editor and genius at Vogue magazine from 1963-1971, Diana Vreeland. The original fashion publicist, Eleanor Lambert. And the unorthodox doyenne of society, the icon, Millicent Rogers.
September 15, 2011
