Tag Archives: John Keats

Suddath / Van Valkenburgh House

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The citrus grove featured the first Satsumas in North America. Robert Bruce Van Valkenburgh had brought them from Japan. He’d raised 17 volunteer regiments for the Union in the Civil War, included the one he commanded at Antietam. The Suddaths called this rambling house home for 70 years and dug old bottles from the bluff. Jessica climbed the roof as a child. 

Riverside Park’s Camellia Grove, Keats, Basho, and People Being More Like Plants

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The camellia garden suffered terribly in the tornado of December, 1997. The oldest camellias are 50 years old. They might have a century left.

What happens in the grove is an inverse mimesis–it determines the city outside it.