craft garden — BLOG — Susannah Mira

The other week I got a huge kick out of watching a new banana plant leaf begin to unfurl, just like one belonging to a small houseplant would. Current Craft Center resident Abi Ogle shared in my excitement, however, she has been utilizing garden materials in her work and seems to be equally, if not more, gripped by the wonder of what’s growing here.

If you told me even a couple of years ago that I’d be dazzled by ordinary plants (that is to say, anything but a cactus) I’d probably have made a quizzical face. In fact, it was during a quick visit last fall, as Sandi and her partner journeyed through Taos, that it first occurred to me to join the effort she leads at the Craft Center, more inspired by our friendship than any burning desire to get my hands in the dirt. Or so I thought. That the weekly weeding sessions have become such a pleasure, not to mention source of replenishing fascination, is just one of many tremendous surprises this year.

Last month I started volunteering in the garden at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, which includes beds of recognizable sources of raw materials used in craft, such as cotton, indigo, and agave, among many others. The last time I had a regular routine at the Center was in January 2013, when my 8-month artist residency—and life in Houston—began. I can’t say I had much interest in the garden then, and the only time I spent out there was when I used it as a makeshift woodshop, pushing a belt sander on a plastic cart over to the deck so as not to grate the entire building finishing endless piles of plywood. The upside is that the plants, now that I’m really noticing them, are huge sources of surprise.

Take this fallen banana flower petal, which I saw from afar as something squishy and red in the umbrella sedge. I braced myself for an unwanted revelation, the spilled intestines of a dearly departed creature, for example. What a relief to instead discover this perfect crimson basin and then its host waving overhead.

This week I also had the unique opportunity to de-thorn this dried out cactus stalk so that later we’d be able to break into it and retrieve the fibers inside. The texture, I am here to report, was a lot like a Wasa crisp.

This specimen used to stand proudly in a planter outside the building, as captured from afar in this moody sky snapshot from the last days of my residency in August 2013. I’m assuming it perished in the Plant-ocalypse hard freezes a couple of winters ago, which also wreaked havoc in my own personal cactus plot.

Before shots of the wood oats beds ahead of the annual work party.

Wood oats shearing in progress on a rare chilly winter morning (above) as well as the triumphant after shots of the beds.

With at least a dozen of us working steadily to cut and segment the stalks, finished with the wood oats early enough to tackle other tasks, like cutting down the vetiver to use as mulch in other areas. To say that I’m getting an overdue education in grasses would be an understatement…

Additional curiosities of the last weeks below. Since I know firsthand how much effort is involved in creating multiples of organic forms, I guess you might say I am easy to impress.