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| Tasha Tudor and her goat |
When we learned to make salves and oils, our lovely teacher Rosemary told us that the beeswax we would be using was from Tasha Tudor's own hives. She said anyone who knows about Tasha would realize just how special that beeswax is. I don't know much about Tasha Tudor, though every time I heard her name (which was only a handful and always through Rosemary somehow) it evoked some deep rooted childhood memory, like when you hear the tune of a favored children's song or recall a recipe your grandmother used to make you. I must have known subconsciously that Tasha Tudor was a well known and beloved author and illustrator, and I believe that as a little girl I was read her books and I traced my fingers across her charming drawings of rabbits, flowers, field mice, and other natural things, all the while imagining I was there inside the scene. I didn't know that Tasha Tudor was a woman who decided to defy modernity and live a completely natural "old-fashioned" life. I haven't read much about how Tasha came to such a decision (maybe it just happened naturally?) but it doesn't really matter. What matters is that Tasha was self-sufficient, in tune with nature, and happy. Tasha published nearly 100 books, one of the most well known being "Pumpkin Moonshine." Since I shelve books in the Children's room at the library, I will definitely be looking at some of her work, as I work. She also wrote books about her lifestyle and one of those which I recently read is called "The private world of Tasha Tudor" which is a semi-auto biography (written also with Richard Brown, 1992).
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Tasha's beloved corgyn
painted by her |
The book goes through a year at Tasha's beautiful gardens and home, which she says is "east of Vermont and west of New Hampshire," perhaps pointing to its being out of this world and time. I found it interesting that while Tasha had created a lifestyle entirely of her own which was undeniably different from most people around her, she was very practical and not the airy dreamer-type I imagined. She was blunt and honest about herself and her actions, stating that she was a commercial artist who published books to "keep the wolf from the door!" I appreciated this honesty very much because it's so easy to think that people like Tasha who are such independent spirits are almost fictional, or somehow not human, but she was. She accredited her strength of spirit to gardening: "gardening has untold rewards. You never have to go on a diet, at age 76 I can still wear my wedding dress and still chin myself. I've never been depressed in my whole life and I've never had a headache. They must be awful. I attribute it to goat's milk and gardening." Some of the most beloved of her plants were lettuce poppies (my favorites as well), peonies (prairie moon), rein de violette roses, artemisia, iris, pinks, clematis, and forget-me-nots (I am growing a small pot of these now). In the book "Tasha Tudor's heirloom crafts," by Tovah Martin, it is said that every floral border that Tasha ever painted was once a living wreath. This must be why her illustrations are so alive and almost tangible, they enter our hearts through all the senses somehow. Tasha loved her dogs (corgyn was the plural form she used for corgy- she claimed are the best kind of dog and she even said, "Apollo can't hold a candle to my Owen"), her one-eyed cat, her African grey parrots, and her goats, sheep, horses, and other four-legged friends.
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Beautiful lettuce poppies from
Tasha's garden |
It is clear that she was always creating something - whether it was a basket woven from her homegrown wood, soap and candle making, dyeing, weaving or lace-making, or creating her handcrafted marionettes. She also used Rosemary's recipes for herbal creams and medicines, such as rose hand cream. But again, Tasha brushed off her incredible industriousness to her mere "fiddling with some project or another." But, I think I know better. I think Tasha was a brave soul who crafted a life that she genuinely believed in- and by opening that door (and shutting others) she made the space for the things she loved to do. When we love what we do, we always want to be doing it! Tasha said her credo in life is that "if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." (Henry David Thoreau) I admire Tasha's honesty with herself. I admire her bravery in going against the grain and living in a manner that was her truth. I admire her passion for creation and her energy and motivation to get things done. She took her life seriously and didn't let a chance pass by for her experience to be infused with meaning. Just because we live in a day and age when most everything we could ever want or need is already made for us doesn't mean we need to go out and buy it. There can still be mystery and magic in our lives. We can still have the deep, true satisfaction of growing our own gardens, of witnessing life's miracles every day. We might all have a Tasha inside of us, just waiting to design the life of our dreams. I can see it now like a vivid illustration on a blank, clear page; living the life we love and loving all that we live.
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