Garden History Image of the Week

A child's drawing of a sod-house homestead in Nebraska, c. 1885. [via the grovefamily genealogy site]

Corn in the front yard was not the norm on homesteads, but the sod house was always intended to be a temporary dwelling anyway, just until money could be raised for the lumber to build a proper wood frame home.  The symmetry, in age and placement, of the two trees makes it likely that they were intentionally planted.

My own great-great grandmother lived in a sod house on the plains of Colorado. 

The Garden that Climbs the Stairs: Verb Gardens

 

I've been thinking lately about this garden, a temporary 2009 installation at BilbaoJardin by Balmori Associates of New York, because of how rare it is to see a garden portrayed as doing anything but predictably
grow
-ing
-n
-er
-s

as if we didn't know that already.

What does it mean to make a garden that is [insert verb here] speaking, studying, playing, arriving, pushing, pedaling, blushing, juggling?  Can a garden--not a garden element, but the whole landscape--stand and stare, wobble, whistle or whirl?  If you could make a verb garden, what would it be?