Gilding The Cage - The Review of Beauty by Jessica DeFino

My mother came over to help me with the yard the other day. We planted yarrow and marigolds and trimmed the butterfly bush and sprinkled the dirt with worm castings, and then she said, “Why don’t you put that van Gogh in the garden?” I’ve had a gold-framed print of Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background, a hand-me-down from my grandmother, leaned up against my kitchen wall for months. I couldn’t figure out a good spot for it. I wouldn’t have thought the garden would be a good spot for it, but I tried it, and it is. Something about the oil-painted irises beside the soon-to-bloom salvia, the real beside the representation — I can’t stop staring out the window at them! I see the beauty of both more clearly. And I think: What if van Gogh sold a product to make all flowers look like his flowers? Some three-step gardening system to fade their vivid purple to his preferred shade of blue, to soften the points of their petals? What if he mass-produced a preservative coating to keep them i

My mother came over to help me with the yard the other day. We planted yarrow and marigolds and trimmed the butterfly bush and sprinkled the dirt with worm castings, and then she said, “Why don’t you put that van Gogh in the garden?” I’ve had a gold-framed print of Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background, a hand-me-down from my grandmother, leaned up against my kitchen wall for months. I couldn’t figure out a good spot for it. I wouldn’t have thought the garden would be a good spot for it, but I tried it, and it is. Something about the oil-painted irises beside the soon-to-bloom salvia, t