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“No, Eleanor Roosevelt favored wildflowers over garden flowers,” said the docent outside of Roosevelt Cottage. I had asked for the names of Eleanor’s favorite perennials, planning to include them in my own flower beds. With no training in landscape design, I long ago settled on the guiding principles of inexpensive finds and fond associations, which have led me to plant anything my friends will split with me, plus flowers like cleome, for Beatrix Potter, and dahlias, for my mother. With big-garden aspirations, I also chose a lot of fast growers, which are a mixed blessing. On the one hand, spring brings a lot of containment efforts. My husband’s sore back might be the only reason your yard doesn’t contain my oregano, which is set on world domination. But on the other hand, abundance! Every year I invite friends and passing strangers to take away—please!—some of the spreading perennials I scooped up back when Marty Livingstone sold plants, honor system style, on top of a roadside door. My gardens are always one rainy week from being overrun by creeping veronica, lily of the valley, sunchoke, spurge, and circle flower. Plus, a prolific pink and purple poppy that surprised me, and as it turns out, had also surprised Marty, simply materializing in her gardens, perhaps dropped by a passing bird. It’s a good thing they’re all so beautiful. Clearly a love of garden flowers is just another on the list of things Eleanor Roosevelt and I don't have in common, besides height, a 34-room cottage and family in the White House. Still, I share her love of wildflowers. The weather has been incomparable this week. I’ve taken my lunches on the lawn, Zoom calls on the deck, and fragrant walks with the dogs. The gravel roads we walk smell of balsam this time of year and are sometimes scattered with small woodland blossoms, like bunchberries. This week, there are small groupings of pearly everlasting, popping up in unassuming, dusty places, planted by no one. And of course every roadside is lined with a mix of buttercups and lupine, and the gravel roads with wild raspberries and blueberries. So many of my neighbors here are capable of supporting themselves by eating just from the Maine woods, and this time of year, the world feels so abundant, I begin to imagine that I could do it, too. That’s the power of a Maine summer.
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