Dear Friends,

All of us who treasure the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary probably have felt inspired there at one time, or often. Perhaps you’ve thrilled to the sight of a hillside of perfect ferns or a pair of raptors flying above. The waves of color in the prairie on a windy August afternoon can surely stop us in our tracks, and I love the massive show of blooming turtlehead in late summer. How wonderful it is to enter the Garden and know that there is always something beautiful to discover!

Some people go beyond the sensory enjoyment and botanical or birding knowledge that the Garden offers. Artists are the special people who transform the beauty and wonder of the natural world into images, objects, poetry, music, dance and other media.

Artists have been drawn to nature as subject matter for as long as humans have been on earth. I think of cave paintings, pictographs and carvings by hunter-gatherers; illuminated manuscripts decorated with ornate flowers and mythic creatures; Japanese screen paintings of cranes and peony blossoms; Durer’s amazing animal and bird etchings.

When Twain describes the Mississippi, are you not transported? Reading Melville, one can feel and fear the wildness of the sea. In Whitman’s words, the vibrant portrayal of nature becomes hymn-like, rhapsodic. And today, lucky is the person who visits Giverny and then sits in the Orangerie reveling in Monet’s Water Lilies, perhaps beginning to understand how an artist can bring such intense scenes into being based on his or her relationship with plants.

This issue of The Fringed Gentian™ features some of the artists of our own Garden, people who have pursued their creative endeavors inside the gates and shared their work with others. In the history of the Friends, there have been many practitioners, including poets Betty Bridgman and Lon Miller; and bird painter Harriet Betzold, forerunner of the Bird x Bird artists Jennifer Davis and Cynde Randall.

Our present master, Jim Proctor, maker of buckthorn art for as long as he has led our invasive efforts, has now expanded his oeuvre into the realm of exquisite miniatures fashioned from seeds, pods, and other plant materials. Gratitude and appreciation are due to all the talented and visionary people who lead us to see more deeply into nature through their art. In that spirit, let us welcome the season with a poet’s song:

Autumn Day

Lord, it is time. The summer was very big. Lay thy shadow on the sundials, and on the meadows let the winds go loose.

Command the last fruits that they shall be full; give them another two more southerly days, press them on to fulfillment and drive the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Who has no house now, will build him one no more. Who is alone now, long will so remain will wake, read, write long letters and will in the avenues to and fro restlessly wander, when the leaves are blowing.

J. Pam Weiner
President

Above: Drawing by Harriet Betzold, ©2005

Below: The Prairie hillside with grasses and Indian Hemp