“Young mother, twenty-five, says, ‘Next year we’ll be painted and have a lawn and flowers,’ rural shacktown, near Klamath Falls, Oregon,” September 1939.
Photo and caption by Dorothea Lange for the U.S. Farm Security Administration, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
‘Established’ is a good word, much used in garden books,
‘The plant, when established’. . .
Oh, become established quickly, quickly, garden!
For I am fugitive, I am very fugitive —— Mary Ursula Bethell, from “Time“
enclos*ure 
Comparatively speaking, the house and family look in good shape. So maybe next year will come true. Not sure I really want to know the outcome.
I hope she got her garden. Perhaps she and her husband did well in the growth of industry related to WWII.
When I worked in the Fine Art world of photography, Dorothea Lange’s photos of the Great Depression haunted me. I have never before seen her image you posted, but I instantly knew it was hers. She had a knack for portraying the hardships of women that is unmistakable. The pathos is palatable
Although there’s no actual garden in the picture, I immediately felt the presence of the one in her dream.
I wonder what she meant by ‘lawn’. Was it a mono-culture? Was it a seed mix?
Fully understand the need to trap the dirt/dust/mud from her home & sanity.
Even in this quick picture and quote there are so many ways to not understand what is clearly meant.
Garden & Be Well, XO Tara
I debated for a couple of weeks whether to post a garden photo with no garden in it. But the image and the caption created such a tangible sense of her desire for one.
[…] the Watsons appear to be. Ten years later, she would begin the work that made her famous: capturing the faces of the Great Depression and the WWII internment of […]