Bloom Flanked Gate

Back in our early discovery days as Rosslyn’s residents, Susan and I endeavored to juggle our sometimes differing visions and perspectives, often converging (but, just as often, diverging) processes and priorities, and an inestimably elastic timeline. What, you might rightly wonder, does this have to do with the bloom flanked gate in the triptych accompanying this post?

Nothing. And everything.

Today’s post offers you three distinct renderings of the same subject. One of several gates allowing access through the fence that encloses Rosslyn’s orchard and vegetable/fruit gardens is the focus of the images. It’s actually a pair of swinging gates that we fabricated and installed a decade and a half (or so?) ago out of homegrown, stump-to-lumber cedar harvested on Rosslyn’s grounds. This is one of two opening to the south, and it is flanked by a pair of larger-than-life lilacs and two ooold hydrangeas.

The first photograph at the top of this post is a straightforward color photograph snapped with a smart phone. If the frame were tighter and the quality of the image were better, you might be able to tell that the lilacs are in bloom. The one to the right/west has rosy violet blooms, and the other has white blooms. A perfect or imperfect pairing? You decide.

The hydrangeas, smaller and located to the outside of the lilac shrubs, are a tree variety so old that a local garden center asked permission years ago to clone them. For all we know, they made date back to the early days of this property.

These hydrangeas originally grew on either side of Rosslyn’s front entrance. A porch that wrapped the east side of our home during the Sherwood Inn years would’ve concealed them, so that would suggest that they must’ve been transplanted from some other location on the property. Or another property altogether.

I will revisit — soon perhaps — Bob Kaleita’s impressive excavator work years ago when he obliged my wish to painstakingly dig these enormous tree hydrangeas from Rosslyn’s east facade, transport them to the back without damaging them, and then transplant them where they now thrive. For now I’ll postpone that because the point of today’s post is not so much the backstory as view. And to be precise, three interpretations of this view.

I invite you to consider the many ways of seeing art, landscape, architecture, etc. Looking at the same subject from the same perspective at the same moment in time, the focus and feeling can differ widely. Do you experience these three renderings differently? Just want to PLT more? Less? What sentiments are evoked by transforming the original photograph of the gate, flowering shrubs, trees, and lawn into black and white? What about watercolor?

[NB: You may find John Berger’s Ways of Seeing www.ways-of-seeing.com interesting if this post kindles your curiosity. And you may enjoy experimenting with Waterlogue to explore relationships between photography and watercolor.]