Late-Summer Postcard

Ruminations on Gardens and Homes

originally published October 1, 2008

I grew a garden for three summers when I lived in Athens. The first garden generated a small plot of potatoes about the size of a double bed. The next year I grew more potatoes while adding turnips, collards, peppers and watermelons. Tailgaters stole the peppers and melons on gameday as caterpillars progressively ate their way through the turnips and collards I didn’t consume myself or trade for fried chicken with the soul food restaurant in front of my house.

The garden grew bigger and more plentiful each year. The soil became rich from continually mulching in the giant tea bags I got every day at closing time from the restaurant. The grocery co-op in town had sunflower seeds for sale the third summer. Many of these flowers became a deep red I had never seen before. Their stalks grew 10 feet tall before falling over in the wind.

The constant success of my potatoes inspired me to plant other underground foods, including carrots. Things got busy and I never thinned the rows. During the harvest I discovered two carrots firmly wrapped around one another. I washed them off, made a quick snapshot and gave them as a present that night to the girl I was dating at the time. I have tried since then to grow more intertwined carrots to photograph, but have not been able to come close to the success I had with that original garden in Athens.

It interests me how people use nature to describe their lives. I bounced back and forth between New Mexico and Georgia for years after leaving my full-time job in Athens. I was never in one place long enough to grow a garden. My wandering went on to include Italy and Maine before reaching my current residence in Louisiana. It is only during the past couple of summers that I have been able to grow potatoes and carrots and other plants that grow down into the ground. This summer I photographed dozens of tree roots on the bank of a creek. I thought about how people stay in an area when it provides something they need, but move on when things dry up.

I considered the dwellings animals build and their methods of construction. A squirrel or bird will make a nest high in a tree attempting to evade predators. A wasp or dirt dauber will settle in a garage or under the overhang of a house to keep its paper or dirt nest from getting soaked in the rain. A beaver will damn up a creek, flood the valley and then build its lodge in the center of the pond, which can be entered only from beneath the water’s surface. I photograph these things as a way of examining what my home should do in comparison to what it actually does.

Several of my garden images challenge conventional notions of beauty. A plant blown down in a storm that has the perseverance to grow back up again is more beautiful to me than one that grows straight, yet lacks character. Some of my photographs are constructed images where I consciously decide what to leave in and what to leave out. Other images are simply my documentation of what I see as being notable whether it is good, bad or something that I realize is impermanent and will be seen by others only if I take the time to save it in the small way I can.

The pieces I make have particular meaning to me, but I understand other people will see them in their own way. My photographs are not necessarily created to illustrate or provide answers. If anything, I’d like for my images to generate more questions. I do not see them as endpoints, but rather starting places where I give the viewer ideas to ponder and allow room for their imagination to create the rest of the story.

Frank Hamrick

Frank Hamrick’s photographs appeared frequently in Flagpole when he lived in Athens. He now lives in Ruston, LA and teaches in the School of Art at Louisiana Tech University. Read and see more of his work at www.frankhamrick.com.