In the early 1960s, O’Keeffe was happily immersed in the earth of her garden.

Meanwhile, Folgers was desperately trying to convince American women that they had one choice:

Buy Folger’s instant coffee…

Or

Risk losing their husbands.

I love that Georgia O’Keeffe chose “none of the above.”

So what did she choose to do instead?

Instead, Miss O’Keeffe chose to walk the New Mexican hills with her two chows, grow an unruly paradise of a garden, and create some of the best American art of the twentieth century.

What false choices have you opted out of falling for in the second half of life?

Georgia O’Keeffe kept on ignoring Madison Avenue’s plans for her throughout her nearly ninety-nine years on earth.

She just kept on painting.

In later life, when her vision was failing, she kept on sculpting.

She also kept on grinding her own flour, baking her own bread, making her own yogurt from local sheep’s milk, and living in her unique, feisty way.

I see Georgia O’Keeffe as having been a grounded sage of sorts, who had turned her share of personal suffering into wisdom, and whose steadying anchor in the stormy sea of life was the land.

Because O’Keeffe was a natural gardener.

Much of her physical, emotional, and spiritual contentment stemmed from observing nature and growing and preparing food for herself and others who helped her manage her land. 

Come with me on a short walk through the garden and kitchen of one of America’s favorite painters.

O’Keeffe’s Garden: A Piece of Paradise in the Desert

A few years back, I took a pilgrimage to O’Keeffe’s home and studio in Abiquiú, New Mexico.

It wasn’t surprising that her sparsely furnished, clay-walled home had the same dreamy yet stark look that her paintings have.

What surprised me was the whimsy and lush beauty of O’Keeffe’s garden.

Black, branchy tree shadows draped over coral-beige enclosing adobe walls.

Buzzing bees navigated through the plum, apple, and apricot trees.

Sagebrush, Russian olive, and greasewood trees graced the eastern rooms of the house where O’Keeffe’s sister, Claudia, often stayed (Lynes/Lopez, 216). 

I felt enchanted by the property’s many whispering tamarisks.

(Here’s a beautiful article for deeper reading on the garden: How Georgia O’Keeffe’s Garden Keeps Growing Three Decades After Her Death.)

I imagined how the place would feel after a rainstorm with all the irrigation channels open to create paths of gurgling waterways.

Though the most memorable sound for me that day was the billowy rustle and percussive pop of clean, white sheets still set out to dry on O’Keeffe’s windy clothesline just west of the north garden.

This lucky clothesline was nestled between sweeping willow trees and fragrant lilacs.

In the north garden, O’Keeffe’s inky green junipers curved round in bonsai waves against the turquoise sky.

There, it dawned on me that O’Keeffe did not just make a garden here; she created what the ancient Greeks referred to as a temenos.

More Than a Garden, O’Keeffe Made a Temenos

A temenos is an ancient Greek word for a sacred enclosure or sanctuary.

It means “I cut.”

A temenos was a sacred bit of green surrounding a temple, cut off from urban use.

Swiss psychologist Carl Jung later defined a temenos as a purposefully created, bounded place where one’s most important work is encouraged to come to fruition.

O’Keeffe made a clay-walled temenos at Abiquiú, where she grew and refined her thought process/ her artistic process amid her wondrous garden.

Maybe we can all do this for ourselves?

We don’t need a Greek ruin or an elaborate folly.

Perhaps our own humble garden (be it a window box or Persian paradise) can be our own temene too?

Something to ground us every day.

O’Keeffe Enjoyed Herbs Every Day From Her Kitchen Garden

O’Keeffe adored her small herb garden.

She enjoyed the unique flavor herbs imparted to her meals.

The artist also honored herbs for their sensual appeal.

She appreciated the beauty of their physical forms, their tactile allure, and their varying enticing aromas.

The author Margaret Wood once was one of O’Keeffe’s live-in cooks/assistants in the artist’s later years. Wood describes the introduction O’Keeffe gave her to the herbal kingdom:

Wood said, “Miss O’Keeffe acquainted me with wiry tarragon, feathery dill, stalky lovage, bushy green and purple basil, and other herbs” (Wood, 1).

O’Keeffe’s unruly herb garden also gave forth sorrel, summer savory, chives, tarragon, parsley, marjoram, and many mints (Ibid, xiv).

But O’Keeffe’s herbs were not grown just for pleasure.

Like everyone and everything connected to her home, they had their work to do in Abiquiu.

What Georgia O’Keeffe Ate from her Garden

O’Keeffe was well aware of the restorative properties of herbs and their abilities to make a significant contribution to overall wellness.

She was a health nut.

Georgia was amazingly strong, radiant, and active well into her nineties.

In fact, O’Keeffe was vigorously rafting and camping her way down the wilds of the Colorado River as late as her late seventies.

Nutrition and herbs had much to do with O’Keeffe’s vim, vigor, and long lifespan.

Salad was on the menu daily for lunch.

And though as she got older, O’Keeffe’s cooks often prepared meals, Georgia usually made the daily lunch salads with freshly picked lettuce, herbs, and vegetables (Wood, 1).

Did you know Georgia was an early adopter of the teachings of exercise and biochemist and bodywork pioneer Ida Rolf?  

Or that O’Keeffe was good buddies with another rebellious biochemist, the nutritionist and author Adelle Davis (who wrote the groundbreaking 1954 book Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit)?

O’Keeffe Was a Foodie, a Slow Foodie

Like most prolific artists, O’Keeffe had a fierce and fast work ethic.

But when she was not working, she understood the pleasure and meditative importance of life in the slow lane.

And I want more of us artists to master to remember the wisdom of the slow lane.

One of O’Keeffe’s favorite books was the 1906 classic The Book of Tea by Okakura Kakuzo, which lyrically describes the Japanese tea ceremony, the merits of simplicity, and the philosophy underpinning tea (Udall, 220).

O’Keeffe enjoyed taking tea daily, often favoring a spearmint tisane plucked fresh from the garden and slowly served from her modest, yet comely, Japanese teapot.

Check out my post How Tea Can Make You a Better Artist! for the skinny on how O’Keefe and other artistic geniuses used tea to support them in making great art. 

O’Keeffe’s Fresh from the Garden Recipes

O’Keeffe’s recipes, like her teapot, were not meant to impress; they were no-nonsense and good for you. However, that did not mean food from her kitchen was bland or put together in a slapdash fashion.

Celebrity chef and author Deborah Madison has been quoted as saying the following about O’Keeffe’s ostensibly overly simple recipes:

“It looks as if there’s nothing special going on with the recipes, but read between the lines and everything that promises deep goodness is there, mainly the fruits of the garden translated with a sure hand into, say, a salad of torn herbs or a soup scented with lovage”(Wood, ix).

Why not peruse O’Keeffe’s personal recipe for salad dressing written by Margaret Wood and decide for yourself?

O’Keeffe’s Famous Herb Salad Dressing

Etymologically, lovage was derived from two words: love and ache (ache being a medieval word for parsley)

So technically, lovage is the parsley of love.

For the last few centuries, though, lovage’s popularity has wilted, and with occasional exceptions, it has languished on the sidelines of herbal history.

O’Keeffe paid no mind to popular sentiment and enjoyed lovage anyway.

And so should you.

Here are six ways to delight in that certain je-ne-sais-quoi nuance lovage can offer.

Six Sumptuous Ways to Use Garden Lovage

Roast Chicken With Lovage

Gail Monaghan of the Wall Street Journal recommends that cooks “Tuck a sprig or two inside a whole chicken or fish before roasting, and you’ll be rewarded with intriguing, je-ne-sais-quoi nuances; guests will be racking their brains to decipher the delicious enigma.” (Monaghan)

Candy Your Lovage

You can candy thick lovage stems to decorate a cake top or enhance homemade biscotti. Use them in a dish as you would use candied fruit pieces or the candied stems of angelica (lovage’s botanical cousin).

Endnotes

Lisle, Laurie. Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O’Keeffe. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980.

Lynes, Barbara Buhler, and Agapita Lopez. Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Houses: Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu. New York: Abrams, 2012.

Udall, Sharyn Rohlfsen. Carr, O’Keeffe, Kahlo: Places of Their Own. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000. Underhill, Linda L., and Jeanne Nakjavani. “Plant Profile:

Lovage Herb.” Mother Earth Living. October/November 1992. www.motherearthliving.com/gardening/herb- gardening/lovage-herb-zmaz92onzgoe.aspx.

Wood, Margaret. A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keeffe. Santa Fe, NM: Museum of New Mexico Press, 2009