Of Iceberg roses and more...

“Sometimes since I've been in the garden 

I've looked up through the trees at the sky 

and I have had a strange feeling of being happy 

as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest 

 and making me breathe fast.

Magic is always pushing and drawing 

and making things out of nothing.

Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, 

badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. 

 So it must be all around us. 

In this garden --in all the places.” 

 ― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

And we're back home after what it had seemed three seas and a world of a time.  There’s an island in my heart, and I’m thinking that people build too many walls and not enough bridges… I want to build bridges; be a channel, a conduit between people, between races, between cultures, between families and friends; always building, always trying to find common ground through love.  But sometimes you just have to wonder what kind of things may be waiting for you and those you love on the other side of those bridges… what motives, goodness or wickedness awaits in that dark end to stalk you; to haunt you beyond your fears?  Bridges can certainly be destroyed in a moments notice to no fault of your own.  I’m just praying my little heart out that the only and truest thing awaiting at that dark end of our bridges is true love...

The garden is a little oasis of joy and delight these days. 

The Iceberg roses in the front flowerbeds are blooming wonderfully again after some necessary ruthless cutting at the beginning of summer.   

They bloom but did not produced much foliage, and only spindly, thin branches.  They had to be cut almost to the ground. 

Now... lovely little miracles...

 What great gifts roses bestow unto our souls…

endless expanding, wonderful gifts.

They look lovely on our table too...

One little piece of advice to pass along about Iceberg roses... if you want more blooms and less scraggy thin limps, don’t just deadhead them.  Cut far back with long stems. If you cut the blossoms with very little stem, they tend to throw very spindley new growth.

Is it already getting autumnally in your neck of the woods? 

It is here… slowly and inconspicuously, but Autumn is around the corner for sure. How can I tell? You see, the other day…. the woods drew around me while out weeding early one morning… something spectral moved between the trees… a white shadow, a rushing wind among the trees.  I stopped what I was doing and stood up still, very still... listening, my heart pounding. 

What was it, I couldn’t tell.  Except perhaps, that nothing should surprise us, really… why, the season of enchantment is upon us and anything of the spooky variety can surely happen at any given time.  I’m sure if you listen and pay close attention you too would hear it—the cackles, the songs, the music of dragonfly charms and beads of ankle bracelets of witches as they trot the sun-warmed earth almost in a hurry.

What else do you see around you 

that’s foretelling the soon arrival of autumn

in your little world? 

Do share!