One day last summer, Mac urged me to come visit him in his Wellfleet garden that afternoon. He wanted me to see how his late peonies overlapped with his early roses, each fully claiming the moment of transition.
Mac’s house is steeply perched above the garden, so there is a literal overview before the descent into the carefully choreographed particulars of shape and color. On either side of a grassy aisle between these upper beds, houses and feeders attract the birds supplying song for this feast of the senses.
I treasure this impromptu experience all the more now.
Mac also reveled in the foods he grew in his lower garden, beginning with spring asparagus and extending the season with other vegetables well into the fall.
Paging through his family history, I come across a description of its Ohio farm written in 1876 and see how it inspired him: “stocked with about 1,209 choice budded peach trees, two large apple orchards, a large quantity of choice variety of pears, a large wild-gooseberry and plum orchard, three acres of vineyard in good order, several acres of raspberries and strawberries all in fine bearing condition.”
At the summer chapel of St. James the Fisherman, Mac was known for his beautifully crafted sermons, giving form to the day’s three assigned scripture readings by braiding them.
It wasn’t only that he knew how to fully appreciate beauty in a peony or a perfect Wellfleet oyster but that he also knew how to create things of beauty.
This spring, Mac’s perennial garden will return to life to mark his legacy. I will visit it and appreciate it as Mac would wish me to, with renewed faith in the past and hope for the future. —Alexandra Marshall
