In 1986, I was walking home from Open School with my kindergartener, Hadley. She stopped along the way to pick a few of the blue Squills that were blooming in Langworthy Garden. As I waited for her, I realized I was leaning against a FOR SALE sign. That evening, I called our older daughter, Hilary, who had grown up loving the old naturalized “secret garden” and assisting the Langworthy Sisters in their little shop A TREASURE HOUSE OF GIFTS that occupied the two front parlors of their home on Michigan Avenue. The sisters had been born there in a home that had belonged to the family almost a century. Hilary begged me to save the house from the wrecking ball. I called Francis Langworthy who had moved to Wisconsin to live with a sister after the passing of her younger sister, Louise. She remembered our daughter and consented to sell the home and Langworthy Garden to me for a weaving studio and natural dye garden . That year our middle daughter Hadyn and her father planted the Michigan White Pine by the Ingham Street porch. It is now taller than the house, started from a tiny six inch sapling. The patch of Squills have naturalized to fill the entire garden with a magnificent azure blue. This is my favorite moment in the garden. I amaze annually, after Michigan’s long winter, that the Garden always remembers in a splendid confirmation of Spring’s promise of rebirth.
WES & LES -- MORE OR LESS 