I started writing this article in spring and finished in the fall.
I had no idea this would bring me into lockstep with the cycles of life, but it did.
The timing was perfect on both ends.
Saturday comes around, and you got nothing.
Not true.
You have one of the finest public places in the United States, and maybe one of the most overlooked public places in the nation too.
The Chicago Botanic Garden sits on 385 acres up on Lake Cook Road just east of U.S. Highway 41. It has a lovely brick wall around it now to cut down on the highway noise (it works!) and at this time of year, the tops of trees starting to change color give you just a little peek at what is inside.
I have walked in this huge garden during every month of the year, from the height of summer, when its vegetable gardens and fruit trees are at “running wild” speed, to the deep, frozen grayness of February, usually to see what birds can be spotted, or just to be alone and build up an appetite for some hot soup.
Spring, the time of potential, of hints of what is to come, is magnificent at the Botanic Garden. You can see the . . . wait a minute!
What I know about the naming of flowers would fill a corner of one very small page, so I am not going to go there.
Too risky.
It doesn’t matter to me anyhow.
The Botanic Garden is not just for people who know all the Latin names and who attend flower shows just to spend hours gazing at posies and marveling at their incredible complexity. Those people are there too.
For me, it’s all about being outdoors in a protected place and watching what you can watch. Maybe waiting for an inspiration.
There are only two places in Chicagoland that have really drawn thoughts about poetry out of me (and you aren’t reading it here because that would be like serving up cake batter. It’s just not ready to take out of the oven yet.)
One of them is the Art Institute.
Not all of the Art Institute, just a couple of parts, one where they have the ancient stone bodies of women and the other where the Flemish masterworks hang.
I could look at these spaces for hours, I think, just imagining who was the model, what were the times and why these static forms, some of them now thousands of years old in the cases of the statues, are so moving, so fluid.
The other is the Botanic Garden in winter, when there are very few people to see and it’s a simple matter to drop into the cafeteria and get some coffee or soup and to just ramble, all but alone, across a frozen tableau where blooming nature awaits only a little sun and a change in season.
I have worried about my children here, pondered the frustrations of journalism, thought about my family, mourned lost kin, looked at the sky and wondered about the meaning of love and nearly inhaled a fantastic ice cream cone on a hot summer’s weekend afternoon.
I have walked for hours with my wife, pondering every angle of the English garden, delighting in the behaviors of ducks, geese and swans along the way. I have navigated the simple bridge in the Japanese garden, two slabs of stone that are set out of line so that evil spirits, which can only walk straight, will be confined to one side or walk into the lake.
I have walked straight into apple trees (on purpose) to have a close look at exactly what kinds of insects were stuck on the red insect balls that hang from the trees. I have been close enough to the Ida red apples to just bite off a chunk (which is not allowed, but which clearly has happened) when they are at their peak and ready to drop.
Every category of bird that nests or visits Chicagoland shows up at one point or another at the Botanic Garden. I have watched goldfinches just a few feet away pulling seeds from thistle, ignoring my presence as they diligently pursue the challenge of eating their weight in seeds each day.
Geese, swans, ducks, flickers, woodpeckers, thrushes, siskins — spend enough time and you can see them all.
The roots of the garden (intentional pun) stretch back to 1890 and the founding of the Chicago Horticultural Society. “Urbs in Horto” (city in a garden) was the city’s motto. The society hosted flower shows and supported lakeshore conservation and city parks but didn’t really click into a higher gear until the 1960s.
In 1963, the Chicago Historical Society was granted 300 acres of forests up at the northern end of Cook County. Groundbreaking on the garden came in 1965. The garden was opened in 1972. Its mission includes collections, education and research.
The garden is free, but the parking is not. It’s $12 for a car (less for senior citizens) but the smart way to do this is to buy a membership ($55 a year for an individual with cut rates for multiple year and family memberships). That way you get a parking pass and windshield sticker that makes you feel somehow special.
Public places are not rarities in America, but public places that are so well maintained and that present such an abundance of flora and fauna are.
There are places in the Botanic Garden where it seems you are a million miles away from anything modern, anything developed, anything hectic.
That, alone, is worth the price of admission.
You come away from the place with ideas.
In the spring, it was with a plan to design and construct fencing and seating for the yard modeled on Botanic Garden fences and benches.
At the other end of the season, when the first hint of late fall was in the air and the apples were hanging red and heavy from the branches in the orchards, I decided I would have a stand of Ida reds of my own in my back yard, trained to act as a hedge.
They aren’t going to be as meticulous as those in the garden, and maybe not as overwhelmingly lovely. But I will know where the idea came from, and where I can go to get some more peace, and some more ideas, too, whenever I need either.
