[ Lost in the Landscape ]

the bamboo-inspired quilt is done!

I’ve posted occa­sion­ally on the progress of the quilt that Linda was stitch­ing to com­mem­o­rate John’s and my wed­ding last sum­mer. Last week the fin­ished quilt made it into my eager hands and I had to share.

The design was inspired by an art quilt by Liz Axford that I’d encoun­tered online, one of her Bam­boo Boo­gie Woo­gie series. And it hap­pened to be one that Linda had actu­ally seen in person.

If you stare at it long enough you can make out the lit­tle bam­boo stems with their joints. It’s nature abstracted, but the nat­ural rhythms still play out in the final quilt.

The back of the quilt fea­tures two inter­twin­ing bam­boo stems made out of fab­ric from two shirts that we liked so much that we’d worn them until they were thread­bare. Isn’t that the most roman­tic detail?

Thanks so much, Linda–We love the quilt and we’ll trea­sure all your love and effort that went into mak­ing it. The quilt will be hang­ing on the wall before the week­end is over!

May 23 2009 | Categories: gardening | Tags: isn't that the most thoughtful thing? • quilts • weddings | 7 Comments »

a june garden wedding–mine!

I had no idea plan­ning a wed­ding required mak­ing so many deci­sions. Like, do you go down to the County Build­ing and do the paper­work and cer­e­mony before going to the watch repair shop? And how do you fit gro­cery shop­ping into the wed­ding day?

After 25 years together John and I finally tied the knot a cou­ple weeks ago. I think we went into the whole wed­ding process think­ing that it’d be pretty rou­tine and anti­cli­mac­tic. Because of that we opted to go down­town and have the county staff do the offi­ci­at­ing, all with­out telling peo­ple we knew. (After a quar­ter cen­tury together can you still call it eloping?)

We went through the steps lead­ing up to the cer­e­mony, fill­ing out the paper­work, endur­ing the unavoid­able wait­ing, mak­ing the mound of deci­sions (Did we want an indoor or out­door cer­e­mony? Did we want to exchange rings? Did we want a video? Pho­tos? Did we want to pur­chase a “Just Mar­ried” bumper­sticker?). And as we were doing that, the seri­ous­ness and power of the what was about to hap­pen started to hit us. We started to get nervous.

In line before us were two casu­ally dressed women and their son who dis­ap­peared into a con­fer­ence room for their cer­e­mony. We’d opted for an out­door wed­ding, and were soon escorted down­stairs and out onto the county building’s sunny south lawn. Two men in tuxe­dos were fin­ish­ing up their vows, and in a few min­utes it would be our turn. After 25 years of mak­ing do, after 25 years of not being able to think that get­ting mar­ried was even an option, it would finally be happening.

The woman who would be offi­ci­at­ing came over and intro­duced her­self, and then we were intro­duced to our des­ig­nated wit­ness. We walked over to a shel­tered spot that was shaded by leafy palm trees and backed by a lushly sub­trop­i­cal green back­drop of can­nas, giant birds of par­adise and large-leaved philo­den­drons that were taller than my head.

The rhythms of a mar­riage cer­e­mony are usu­ally pre­dictable. The cer­e­mony begins. The offi­cial sets the stage with words about how this is both a joy­ous and seri­ous occa­sion, and then the offi­cial asks the cou­ple about their com­mit­ment to each other. As we began to repeat the official’s words, were were say­ing words that we never thought we’d ever be per­mit­ted to utter except in par­ody. It all seemed at least a lit­tle unreal.

As in most other wed­dings, after the “I do’s,” all the good lines pass back to the offi­cial. The offi­cial com­ments on the sit­u­a­tion and then intones the ones that sig­nal that the cer­e­mony is about to con­clude: “by the pow­ers granted me…” So there in the pub­lic gar­den, we were pro­nounced mar­ried. “You may now seal your vows with a kiss.” Spouse A and Spouse B.

Peo­ple often bad­mouth gov­ern­ment for what it doesn’t do, while at the same time they take for granted the many things it does and does well, com­pe­tently, with com­pas­sion, grace, and utmost respect. That morn­ing was one of those unsung, unre­marked occurrences.

So, you might be won­der­ing, what does an inex­pen­sive walk-in wed­ding cer­e­mony buy you in the county? For one, if you opt for hav­ing it done out­doors, you get a water­front loca­tion, just across the street from the bay and the ships that make up the Mar­itime Museum. You get a nice gar­den set­ting with lush trop­i­cal plant­i­ngs. You get a com­pe­tent per­son who will con­duct a brief but respect­ful cer­e­mony. And you might even get as we did, a wit­ness who, when handed your cam­era, turns out to be an accom­plished and seri­ously under­paid wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher. If you require an offi­cial min­is­ter or some­one dressed as Elvis or Spock to offi­ci­ate you’ll be out of luck. But we did just fine.

July 08 2008 | Categories: places | Tags: garden weddings • gay weddings • outdoor weddings • same-sex weddings • weddings | 7 Comments »