There’s an old family photo that I think about every now and then. My sister and I are seated at a viewpoint overlooking the lower falls on the Yellowstone River. My sister is staring into the camera and at my mother who took all these early family pictures. And next to her is me, staring not at the camera but over the railing at something off to the side, not the main attraction of the falls, but something else–maybe the gorge, maybe the river, maybe the clouds and sky and weather. Lost in the landscape.

For me gardens can be wonderful little mementos of the larger landscape. Surround me with interesting plants and their interesting colors and textures, and you’ll stand a chance of losing me in it. But I’m also interested that these patches and pots of earth are totally faked versions of what lies beyond the garden gates and city walls. There’s always a human hand in the garden, and I’m interested in what the garden reveals about the person planning, planting and tending the garden.

And I have lots of other interests that I expect will end up here–art, photography, design, music, politics, science, stuff in the news–and so I expect these notes will ramble a bit, something like an old Lady Banks rose growing in many directions from its rootstock. Since the rambles and brambles grow from the same rootstock, though, I expect they’ll have something in common.

I guess all that’s a bit of a manifesto. I don’t want to lay down too many rules, though, because the world is such an interesting place, even if that world is a small patch of garden with herbs for the kitchen or a tiny re-creation of the cosmos in a flowerpot on someone’s apartment windowsill.

And so, off we go!