That might seem extreme, but it was the right time, the right place, and Pearce, who teaches photography at the University of the Arts, is joyful about the changes.
"We've downsized 50 percent," she announces. "It's really fun."
For 13 years, she worked her lush suburban garden, which had a boxwood maze, a 60-foot peony row and other flowering treasures, four plots measuring 20 feet by 20 feet, and a 50-foot-long cold frame.
Pearce and her husband grew the usual complement of vegetables, along with corn, asparagus and potatoes. They brought in organic soil and manure, made their own compost, and put up zucchini bread, eggplant, tomato sauce and other goodies to last the winter. Anyone who's attempted this knows it's the best.
Also tough.
And so the time came to embrace a lighter life. With one daughter in college and the other finishing high school, Pearce and Gibson headed into the city, shedding possessions, work commutes and farm-scale weekends.
Now, their tiny garden and spacious three-story home, built on the former site of a small cinder-block garage with apartment above, bring unencumbered delight. "It's easy, easy, easy," Pearce says.
Her photographer's eye is rewarded with colorful flowers, shrubs and trees arranged in raised beds, and with rusted farm tools - unearthed in Wynnewood - on the garden walls.
Pearce has peonies, of course - magenta, from the old house - and lots of small trees: holly, pussy willow, fothergilla, serviceberry, river and paper birch. They lend a woodsy feel to her urban square, which is also dotted with orange daylilies and hellebore and pots of basil, sage, parsley, peppermint and rosemary.
Artistically arranged rocks contrast with an effusive show of ever-blooming pink roses and native honeysuckle. The garden, Pearce protests, has "no real design principles behind it," but like a well-constructed photograph, it requires little effort to appreciate.
