Crazy garden love

I have been busy working on some projects around my house for the past few weeks.  I want to come out here and show you what I'm doing and what my little life is all about, but life in the garden is greater and more satisfying than anything I could show you, or do.  And thus, I keep coming back for more throughout my days; coming back for summer's delight under the privets and birds songs, and the small hummingbird that has befriended our little white cottage...   

The woods beyond our gardens are never solitary. They are the habitat of wings and small whispering and mysterious sounds beckoning me...  

The other evening, I had a bird following me through the garden.  Just as the last sun of the day was turning in for the night, I went outside to bid my farewell to my little world, as I usually do.  Then, all of a sudden, I felt something brush past me against my hair... it was a bird!  So fast and low it flew, that it almost hit my head... I wonder if perhaps he was looking for a place to spend the night and thought my hair the perfect pillow?  After all, sometimes I do have a nest of a head indeed.      

Summer has enchanted my soul... I chat with roses and kiss petals, I applaud the sky and the final parade of colors in shades of purples and pinks in which sky and earth shroud themselves with every evening.  The rarity of the spider flower, the purity of the moonflower vine in its whiteness and puffy bride's skirts of a flower... everything I see pull the finest strings deep down in my soul. 

I want to live outside as long as I can; be part of the hush in which the evening recoils, or perhaps become a firefly and fly along transparent wings... summer has planted itself in its zenith, and everywhere I look I see beauty... flowers, colors, forms and birds and butterflies a plenty.   I had to come back here and share my joy!  I just had to!

Do forgive this crazy love... I really wasn't planning on posting more garden pics so soon, in case you'd hate me.  But my little heart is bursting with garden happiness.  And I just had to share it! ;)

Love and smiles to you! 

Ps:  Can we love people by just knowing they exist?  I know I can.  I know I don't know you in person, but those of you who come by often to share life's little moments with me, and leave little presents for me in the form of comments, have become so real to me.  You have become part of my life... and I can sincerely say "I love you!"  That's how crazy I am! ;)  

Summer days...

Yesterday, it was cleaning day in the garden... which means that all the lovely leafy and full hedges of holly surrounding our little white cottage were trimmed and freed of the nasty climber-like type of weed that grows at its feet and makes things unbearable for the poor gardener, because to do so one must squeeze between the hedge and the wall of the house and, as you try to pull the noxious weed out and trim the bushes at the same time, you get badly stabbed by the needle-like leaves of the holly... and you ouch and ayayay... and then you start to think--what if... what if this sharp pain in my arms back neck hands was caused by a meaner source other than the thorns on leaves?  Like, maybe a spider? 

Although the job of getting stabbed by the holly bushes is my duty and mine only, I truly love these bushes.  I am so thankful I opted on keeping them and can hardly believe that my original plan was to take them out.  I remember I even contacted a local company to do the job.  I am thankful these people were irresponsible enough not to come back to do as agreed and thus I was able to keep the holly.  What a blessing in disguise that was.  I cannot begin to imagine the nakedness and starkness without the natural barrier they create...  somehow, these bushes make me feel protected... from the elements, from noise, from onlookers.  And what a lovely, scenic screen they are all year round.   

I also worked on all the small privet bushes I am patiently trying to mold into perfectly round shaggy heads.  These things will take over your entire yard and house if you let them be... all paths and flowerbeds were also thinned out and cleaned of weeds.  Roses were deadheaded and clipped, and after all that was done, everything got watered down.  By hand.  The pond needed water too.  In hot summer days like these, it can loose water to evaporation pretty quickly.  

I also planted the several roots of wild hostas that the nicest lady 'Anita', whom I meet at church this Sabbath, kindly pulled out from her garden early the following morning and brought to church for me to pick up on our way home from camping... wasn't that nice of her!

I was told that in the wild, these species of hostas have the ability to reproduce by seed and that they are very prolific.  I have never seen a hosta seed; nor planted them by seeds either.  Now, let Nature do the job! 

Inside our little cottage I am always working on something new... a new decorating project, a new recipe to try, a new chapter of my book to write.  Days are too short for all I want to do and live.  I can hardly believe we're at the end of another month...  the days fly like birds on the late horizon. 

Thank you all for being here...

The Gypsy Girl and the Fisherman

Right when the sun was high up in the sky, the little gypsy girl and her beau collected some of their belongings and followed the steep narrow row that lead from their little white cottage up the mountains.  At that time of day, clouds were low and hanging from strings made out of heat.  Birds and other creatures of the woods behind their garden were very quiet; hiding somewhere from this conundrum of heat, humidity and overcast skies... 

Up in the mountain... the Blue Ridge Mountains as they are called, the air ran smooth and heat was somewhat tolerable.   They parked their gypsy caravan and set up tent. 

One minute, the little gypsy girl and her lover the Fisherman were working together on getting their camp ready to spend a night or two and the next, the girl found herself  abandoned in frightening forested mountains...

She looked to her left and then to her right.  She turned around and looked north and south, but no sight of the Fisherman was to be seen anywhere.    

It took the little gypsy girl a minute or two to see clearly...  but finally, she understood.  Ah, the lake beyond the camp steaming with fishes... the Fisherman....

Indeed, when the little gypsy girl came to her senses, her lover the Fisherman was already heading down the lake...  

She decided right there and then she should follow him.  Swiftly, she took her most valuable possession her camera, and down the path she went...  

A terrible idea that was... she soon realized!.... you see, the trails down the lake were covered in poison ivy...  she was already flushed with an early bout of poison from her own garden and was afraid things would get worse if she'd to continued down in noxious weeds.... besides, she was wearing the wrong type of shoes for such adventures...  but it was already much too late to go back...

Making sure not to step on any poisonous weed or touch the wrong bush, she continued walking through the perilous routes in direction towards the lake...

For one terrifying moment the little gypsy girl thought she had lost her way.  Things were getting quite creepy by now.  Nobody was to be seen for miles around, not a hush to be heard, peculiar roots protruded from the earth in strange forms and trees and lush vegetation obscured the trails, making things look distorted and remarkably creepy...   

Even tree stumps protruding from the waters resembled ghost and the dead, feeble and wet, coming out of muddy graves to the frighten little gypsy girl....

Until finally... over there! 

...the dear handsome comforting sight of her lover the Fisherman! 

You must forgive me if I won't finish this tale here... you see, the little gypsy girl and her lover the Fisherman are still camping somewhere deep in those mountains... hard to tell what they'll do next, or what food they'll eat or trails will have to be discovered...  For now I will sit down and have a morsel of food until again, night will come near and trees, forest and mountains as one will rest sleepy heads in the lovely arms of another day...  

Would you be here then to hear more stories?  I hope you will my friend!

I'll be waiting inside the old gypsy caravan....

See you then!