Home, Sweet Home

Wherein I return from exhausting travels to ... summer

I guess y’all thought I’d escaped from Substack because it’s been weeks since my last post. I wish I could say I’d absconded to attend the Chelsea Flower Show or to take another lap through the gardens of the Villa Serbelloni where I spent a magical summer nearly 20 years ago, but, alas, the reasons were much more mundane: work and duty.

The work involved an intense weekend in Jacksonville, Florida—yes, I know “intense” is not a word commonly associated with any locale in Florida and, indeed, this was my morning view…

The sun rising over Jacksonville Beach.

But though I was lulled to sleep by the sound of surf every night, my days and evenings were spent mingling with terrifyingly smart people doing bleeding edge work at the intersection of science and culture and communication around the very serious issue of climate change. The group was international—from all over the U.S., but also England, Finland, Slovakia, Bangladesh. Scientists and academics were, of course, the main event but I also met performance artists, community activists, and the odd famous writer or two (looking at you Janisse Ray)—all gathered for “Green Fire,” an off-year symposium sponsored by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.

I was the Friday evening keynote and to say I took the responsibility seriously would be be vastly understating my state of mind leading up to the event… But wow, what a feeling of being involved in important work—all while surrounded by the lush and thoughtfully curated gardens at the University of North Florida’s campus.

The Ogier Botanical Gardens. The campus is not so much carved out of as gently set down in a wetland. And when I say they’ve put thought into the gardens, I mean there is a cycad garden, a healing garden, a Peace Plaza dedicated to Gandhi and MLK, a climate change demonstration garden, a bioswale garden, and even a “snack” trail, aka, French-style potager.

As worthy of remark as the event was the chance to explore the landscape surrounding the city of Jacksonville, which is surprisingly beautiful and, in fact … rural. I gorged myself on fresh catch and margaritas at fish camps and shopped at seafood markets the likes of which I’d only seen in places like San Franciso and D.C.

Safe Harbor Seafood is directly across the street from the Mayport ferry terminal. Using the ferry might mean a slight wait, but it shaves 45 minutes off the drive to Amelia Island.

I crossed the St. John’s River by ferry to explore Amelia Island while my dear friend and tour guide described his idyllic-sounding life on a prairie hammock, connected by boat to work and home and shopping, his garden filled with plants from his travels in Senegal and the Caribbean and Mexico and all points in between. (For real, y’all. Dude has a baobab!)

Finally, slightly tipsy on vodka steeped in Surinam cherries from his garden prepared by the loving hands of his cool Kentucky mom, I hopped the Amtrak Silver Meteor and made my way back north, over rivers and through dreamy swamps… but not home. I went to see my pops, age 96—this is the duty part of the story—and to get reacquainted with youngest members of our extended clan: ages 10, 5, and 4. I just love those guys.

The Aquarium is a go-to spot for bonding with the little 'uns. But lordy, do they run a body ragged.

So… amazing trip—but all in all, it was a pretty stiff dose of extroversion for someone who spends most of her time in near-monastic silence on a little farmette in the woods. When I finally pried myself away after nearly 10 days away and made that final lap back to the cottage in the woods, I was ready for the fainting couch. 

But in my absence, spring had turned to summer. The squirrels were doing their mating dance in the pines and my pomegranate tree had bloomed…

The pomegranate tree that spent the first three years of its life in a pot has bloomed, joining the already-fruiting rabbit-eye blueberries and a fat happy Brown Turkey fig. So much goodness in our sweet little potager garden.

So yeah, I rested for a day but then I was right back to the garden. There’s a lot to tell… More updates to come!