Another visit to Magnolia Gardens, May 2008

A return visit to the beautiful and historic Magnolia Gardens last weekend brought fresh evidence of the splendor and tranquility of this 500-acre wildlife refuge and informally landscaped English-style garden. Whereas a couple of months ago, azaleas and camellias were at their peak bloom, last Saturday the beds were filled with countless varieties of summer-blooming flowers, and, of course, iris along the banks of the small lakes filled with cypress trees.

I now I have membership at this very special garden only about a half hour from home, and can walk the paths and trails any time of year now without having to pay the admission price. I will plan on upcoming visits to bring my backpack and water and a couple of good books to read while I rest on a bench and listen to the sound of birds or the wind in the trees.

Here are photos from last Saturday's visit: Magnolia Gardens, May 18, 2008

These photos are from my visit in early April: Magnolia Gardens, April 2008

You can compare the views at two very different times of seasonal blooming.

Magnola Gardens in Spring

Magnolia Gardens in Charleston is one of the oldest and most beautiful gardens in the world. Visitors from every corner of the globe come here to admire it. More than 250 years old, it was originally a formal, French-style garden, but in the 19th century, one the owners, Rev. John G. Drayton, converted it to an informal, English garden with a more natural and untamed look.

Located on the banks of the Ashley River, this most enchanting and lovely garden spreads over many acres, it's shady paths lined with azaleas and camellias in full seasonal bloom as I walked there yesterday afternoon. Being amidst such resplendent beauty one can only gaze in awe at the sublime artistry of Nature, her flowers, trees, birdsong, rivers mingled with the loving guiding hand of the creators of this garden who wanted to share this beauty with posterity.

As one walks in the garden, on every side there are new places to veer off and explore -- side paths to sit and rest on a bench in a little setting of trees with statues and flowering daffodils and iris; views of the Ashley River and marshes, lagoons and ponds surrounded by cypress trees; and more winding, flower-filled paths that lead up to the famously photographed long bridge over the main lagoon and thence back to the plantation house and entrance.

For the entire duration of my visit, I found an interior peace and what can only be described as a state of bliss where the world outside this garden was but a distant memory, and the sensations and blissful feelings of each moment among such exquisite beauty made me aware of the truly important and valuable things in life.

Only a few hours later, sitting on the porch of the family home downtown, the calm and gentle breeezes of the afternoon gave way to violent wind, rain, hail and tornado warnings from the same storm system making its way directly toward us from the devastation it had wreaked in Atlanta and surrounding areas. Never could a day be filled with such stark contrasts in the moods of Nature, reminding me once again that storms rush through the tranquil times in our lives, and, as this one did, pass out to sea leaving clear skies and gentle breezes once again.

My Flickr page of photos of Magnolia Gardens

You can't go home again, or can you?

At the end of Thomas Wolfe's novel "You Can't Go Home Again," the protagonist George Webber, realized, "You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood.... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame.. back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting, but which are changing all the time -- back home to the escapes of Time and Memory..."... Yet generations of Americans have longed to go home, either to their actual childhood homes or to metaphorical homes located somewhere in the past...

Susan J. Matt
writing in The Journal of American History,
September 2007



Ever since reading "Look Homeward Angel" by Thomas Wolfe as an English major in New Orleans many years ago, I have recalled the impressions his work made on me, and in particular, my concept of "home." I grew up in New Orleans, and, unlike so many people there, I could not wait to finish college and leave the city for good, despite all the fascinating and dreamlike qualities of the place, so unlike any other city in America.

Decades later, however, and especially since the images of the devastation wreaked on the city by Hurricane Katrina, and the great flood it brought, I have thought about returning to visit, to retrace my steps, paths, explore the home streets and sidewalks, trees, backyards, stores, and landmarks that decades ago in my youth were so much a part of me that I could not even imagine living anywhere else, even though from an early age I knew the city of my birth would not be my permanent home.

I think in this regard I am like so many people who are drawn to their hometowns, to their own familiar landmarks, street scenes, smells, sights, ambience and deep-rooted sense of place that we cling to, no mater where we live, work and are anchored in the present.

I find the Sunday New Orleans newspaper, The Times-Picayune, which I read most of my young life, at the local library, I go online and read New Orleans blogs and the daily news online, I think about the parks, walks, French Quarter, old neighborhoods and sandwich shops, my high school in old Algiers, across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans. All these images and memories flicker by from time to time almost every day.

Even though i have no desire to go home to the physical "place" to live again, even in retirement, I find myself returning again and again in my thoughts and memories. So in that sense, we can "go home again," but never actually return. I keep in mind always that the "past is prologue" and the city where I was born and where I spent my formative years molded and shaped who I am today, for better or worse.

Over the years since I have left home, I have lived in quite a number of small towns and cities, each indelibly etching themselves in my memory. In each of them, I believe I sought out, however brief my stay, the links and ties to my original home that were there to be discovered deep within the structure and unique sense of place of each town and city where I subsequently lived. It's hard to describe. It was a feeling that soon came over me, part of the ongoing search for permanence, stability and roots. I did this consciously but probably mostly unconsciously, always with the thought in mind that this or that particular place could never be "home" as I once knew it to be. However, I often think about one idyllic, small college town where I lived for only seven months, and where I imagined I had found something akin to the home of my dreams. Alas, it was not to be.

Now that I have at last, after years of restless roaming and searching, found my "home place" here in Charleston, I have the luxury of indulging in my memories. Ironically, Charleston is where my ancestors are from and lived in the same neighborhood in the historic district where our family home is now. Life has a way of mysteriously completing circles.

I have never been homesick for New Orleans. I have no one there to visit now, no family or friends in that place. I have only my memories. And that is enough.