Happy Birthday William Shakespeare and St. George’s Feast Day

by YankeeJim | April 23, 2010 at 04:19 am

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On this day YankeeJim shares his birthday with the likes of Sir William Shakespeare. This year, I am looking back at my life from the view of my Grandfather who died at the age of 65 years old. I am now several years away from his last moments and I wonder what he saw from that vantage. I was a junior in high school, and he usually saw me dressed up in school cloths and appearing studiously.

Grandpa George wasn’t feeling that well and we all knew it. He was retired and spent most of his time around his grand Queen Anne’s style house while Grandmother tended the Department Store that she managed. In those days, the doctors didn’t have a solid handle on what was wrong with him. He didn’t feel as strong and energetic as he once did. He liked it when his grandchildren would stop by as he would get some help moving some things around in the garage, or reaching for something that he couldn’t quite get to. Just being able to spend time with him and offer a little help seemed good and those moments together are what I remember fondly.

Grandpa George found time to make for himself a cane from a hickory branch. The project took most of the summer as he found a branch, cut the green limb, formed one end around a piece of pipe and held it in place with a clamp. By fall, the stick had hardened and he removed the clamp. Then, he liquored the cane, a layer at a time, until he felt it had enough protection. From that moment on, when he walked, he used that cane. While I don’t need one, that same homemade cane hangs in my closet, just in case I do. Sometimes, on special days like today, I get it out and study it and somehow feel close to the grand craftsman who made it.

“The Bard in the Garden

Shakespeare as nature lover is honored in gardens across the land. One in North Jersey could inspire area planters.

By Dean Loftis

For The Inquirer

Today, April 23, generally is acknowledged as William Shakespeare's birthday, though many zealous bardolators and academic types quibble over this and virtually every other detail of the enigmatic Bard's life and works.

Whether or not this is the date, it is poetically apropos to believe the great Bard's birthday would fall amid the first stirrings of spring, when nature awakens from her wintry slumber, flora comes to life in a profusion of colors and scents and fauna frolic about the garden.

Shakespeare is universally hailed as the poet of nature, his literary immortality achieved primarily through his insights into the passion-driven permutations of human nature. However, modern gardeners also note that his works show he was a keen admirer of the natural world, in which everywhere he found metaphors for the human condition.

In the early 1900s, around the outbreak of World War I and the 300th anniversary of the great poet's death, Shakespeare-themed gardens sprang up across the nation. One notable one started around that time, overflowing with flowers, plants and herbs, still thrives today in the North Jersey city of Plainfield. The Plainfield Garden Club continues to maintain the Shakespeare Garden in Cedar Brook Park, built in 1927.

"We are a small club with the very important responsibility of maintaining this historic, 83-year-old garden that has been chronicled at the Smithsonian," said Susan Fraser, cochairwoman of the Shakespeare Garden. "Our small band of weeders and garden-crazed members have kept this very unique garden thriving for ourselves and for all our visitors.

"To think that this process has gone on for 83 years, unbroken, is not only a testament to the club's loyalty to the garden, but also our enjoyment of going there together as friends."

Fraser believes Shakespeare gardens don't have to exist only on a grand level in public sites - home gardeners seeking a new theme also can plow through the Bard's works for inspiration.

"I think it is an excellent idea for home gardeners to embrace the ideals of the Shakespeare Garden," Fraser said. "It is a garden to be lived in and celebrated in its peak season, June. Too many think English gardens are stuffy and formal. Shakespeare, often bawdy, was certainly not stuffy, and we feel our Shakespeare Garden typifies that informality while also serving as a classic example of a Shakespeare-themed garden."

Of course, the Swan of Avon wrote in Elizabethan England in the 1600s, so not all the flora he cites will grow well in this region. But a visit to the Plainfield Shakespeare Garden will save area gardeners from having to pick through his 38 plays and sonnets to find examples and to determine the plants that grow best in this region.

"On our Web site, there is a listing of all the Shakespearean plants and their original quotes," explained Fraser. "Our lists include plants that were available in Medieval times as well as plants from the original Olmsted Landscape Firm planting list."