Hi and good-bye!

A riot of color.... the color red and pink and cherry-burgundy, and oranges and coral, magenta and green green... everywhere.

An explosion of life everywhere I look.  Behind is the big city with its skyrocket mirrored buildings and busy pace of the modern urb.  I am home.  Home of the knockout roses and my Golden Ragwort fields.  I am jet lagged tired, but this sunny, warm verdant little Paradise of mine keeps me standing and fluttering around like a little yellow butterfly...   

Which got me thinking... are butterflies angels? Are they messengers from the realms of spirit? I'm still in wonder about that huge monarch that appeared in my garden a few months ago... so early in the year.  It truly was a vision of encouragement and a Creator-moment, and I want to believe that angels do abide here... that they are around and above this place... 

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless 

until it finds its rest in thee.” 

(Augustine, Confessions)

Michelangelo once said "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free"... when I think of how this place used to look when we first discovered it, swallowed up in shrubbery so thick and wild grounds stripped of glories, I can only say:  "I saw the angel in the bramble and cleaned, and planted and weeded and created until I set him free in petals...  It is an amazing feeling.

We found the Queen Elizabeth roses in full bloom... roses as big as my opened hand, roses reminiscent of baby's rooms and baby's scent and the ruffled train of brides and soft tulle tutu-skirts...

Before we left for Minneapolis we set all the timers and left the flowerpots in one place so they could be watered down regularly... I think they look so pretty all huddled up together...

And the green is so green and the woods so peaceful and enchanting... 

Light coming through branches and shrubbery, dotting the floors in globules of light... light pervading my very being... when I find my self being hounded by pessimism, and darkness descending upon my mind deceptively, and relentless, and I do... I do need to keep a prayer alive within my soul at all times... like the flickering flame of a candle that resisting the gust of unexpected breezes burn always with this hard, gem-like flame...

America Climbing roses in the loveliest of orange... I only wish I could've captured the real essence of this lovely rose with my lenses... but I can't.  I can only bring to imagination the freshness of orange sherbets and creamsicle milkshakes, and glasses of orange dream punch on a summer's day...

Butterfly... butterfly, touch the ground. Butterfly, butterfly, fly so free, reach the sky... Butterfly, butterfly, say good-bye!  

Good-bye, because we're headed out the door again tomorrow... this time to NY City and Washington for some more meetings and a little visit with our son...  I'm not too enthusiastic about having to leave home again so soon.  This hermit detests airports and crowds and misses her little home and her red roses and her green dark woods when away from them all, but life is a journey and it most be lived...  "The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” (Eleanor Roosevelt)

Thank you to those of "YOU" who always let me know you're out there in one form or another... with your smiling faces and messages... a message in a bottle, I like to think of it that way. Because finding your comments and opening 'that bottle' as it reaches my shores, it always means light and a fresh sultry breeze of wisdom, encouragement and support...  and I love you all.  I truly do!

A garden away from the garden...

Cold and wet in Minneapolis... in a modern and alive Downtown full of beautiful sights, and how lovely and romantic it is to me strolling the streets of this modern city on chilly mornings, under the vapors and sprinkles of a light rain.  Surrounded by tall buildings where the world is reflected twice before your eyes on mirrored buildings and lovely shops with lovely courtyards, where pigeons roam about little tables looking for food....  I love it, I just love this feeling of freedom and newness all around you, the feeling you get when you go to another country and let you heart wander freely as you discover lovely little places in a diversity of thoughts....   

Back home.....

The other morning while strolling the gardens I saw Tigerlily... not a ghost, I should say, for she, or he, was most alive indeed, and it stood for a minute or two as she or he had always done to look straight at me before disappearing among the shrubbery in the woods.  I guess I had been wrong, and most probably it was another feral I saw laying on the road dead, that just looked very much like Tigerlily, and for that, I am thankful.  

I haven't seen Winter, or that other white cat, and I miss seeming that bright flash of white in my mornings. 

We worked so hard in our gardens these past few weeks.  Mowing the lawn and weeding and spreading seeds and planting a new lawn, growing things, fertilizing, watering and planting the vegetable beds...

The Fisherman was finally able to plant his tomatoes now that the weather has finally settled into its warmer mood, and all the lovely vegetable and herb beds are looking wonderful with all kinds of nice things growing in there...  I have to give all credits for it to the Fisherman, because he is the one in charge of all the vegetables and herbs growing in the garden.  I just water them, and later eat them and use them in my cooking...

I got the most romantic little bouquet from the wildflower fields the other day.  How nice, and wonderful, and how blessed I am to have someone who still thinks of me enough to want to stop what he's doing and collect little heart-felt mementos for me...  this, he brought to me the other day while mowing the lawn outside....  a spray of wildflowers that reminded him of me...

I've shopped off about three hands worth of length of my hair...  I needed to do that in order to heal those ends, but it certainly takes some getting used to not having your hips being caressed by the softness of hair as you move...

The new path I created early in the year is doing well now, and the alliums I planted there just a few weeks ago are already breaking ground; their happy filament like heads showing up healthy, and green, and I'm glad I decided to remove the begonias I had originally planted there, as they were disintegrating right in front of my eyes regardless all the care I gave them.  I'm not trusting these flowers any longer for an early planting and might have to experiment if they'd do any better planted later in the season... 

A mystery plant is growing in my garden.  It is a most annoying and thrilling thing not knowing what it is, or what flower it'll be gifting you with...  I'm not surprised though, by this mystery, as much as I am with the woman who gave it the small cutting, right when we moved to our little white cottage. Who was she, and why hadn't I seen her ever again?  All I know is that her name was Jane, and she was blond and gifted with a strange beauty in her own right.  She reminded me of  some woman from another era.  Her countenance already erased from my mind, as I only saw her once.

The Queen Elizabeth roses I planted last spring are blooming... huge blooms larger than the palm of my hands, and as you can see on the background, our little white cottage has given birth to a very small version of its own, which it is actually our new shed.  We were finally able to leave that rented storage unit for good, and what a catharsis it has been being able to get rid of a lot, if not most of the things we brought 'from the past' that I had insisted on keeping with me... Holding on to stuff imprisons us; letting go is freeing.

We are not our stuff; we are more than our possessions.  Our memories are within us, not within our things.  

I have decided not to interfere with Nature and instead of fighting with it, let her design 'certain' parts of my garden as it wishes.  And I am glad I did, for this decision has brought to fruition a wild garden beyond my imagination, filled with lovely yellow flowers everywhere, that seem to sing leaning against the dark of the woods...

 "Each flower is a soul opening out to nature."  

-  Gerald De Nerval

"What grows in the garden, so lovely and rare?  

Roses and Dahlias and people grow there."  

-A Gardener's Diary  

See you soon my friend!

Flowers

Finally... my little world has seen an explosion of flowers... 

Roses are opening everywhere!

Which one is my favorite... which to pick which to enjoy the more?  For myself I hold no preferences among roses, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous.

I will be the gladdest thing

Under the sun!

I will touch a hundred flowers

And not pick one.

~Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Afternoon on a Hill"

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. ~Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat

 A garden to walk in and immensity to dream in--what more can one ask?  

The garden laughs in flowers, and beyond it... 

the dark, supple, wonderful enchanting woods...

Some of the wild 'yellow flowers' dwellers of the woods beyond the garden peeking through...
hi, hello there!

Look at us, said the violets blooming at her feet, all last winter we slept in the seeming death but at the right time God awakened us, and here we are to comfort you. ~Edward Payson Rod

"...Deborah made for the trees fringing the lawn... 

...and once in the shrouded wood felt herself safe.  

It was very quiet. The woods were made for secrecy. 

They did not recognize her as the garden did."  –Daphne du Maurier.

While in the woods this morning, I picked a special bouquet from the soul of the wild...

For Lady of the Woods, Jacqui, Sherry, and Gayla

Dear, wise women who may not know they're angels

I followed what you said:    

"Hold on to your heart and life will give you wings.” 

Thank you... thank you...

Confucius

I'm exhausted... feeling fatigued and drowsy, and I guess I hadn't realized that when in doubt, or when you find yourself in unwanted circumstances or stressful situations, when you don't know exactly how you want to advance, or what to do, or go about or know not what you ache for, or dare dream of meeting your heart’s longing, you do get tired and worn-out.  The mind it does have an incredible amount of power over our bodies... 

...and thus, I had my first job interview today, and I feel awkward with myself, and remorseful and still in doubt about what I said and will be saying, because those nice people had already formed the idea that I was going to accept their excellent offer, and I didn't... or haven't, and they were so pleasant, and showed me around the place, room by room, and they introduced me to everyone, and I got to meet all office support and some of the other attorneys too, and then when I was brought back to the interview room and those nice attorneys who were to be, or are going to be my immediate bosses asked me what I thought, I got this inexplicable, frightening feeling in me, and I felt a tight knot in the pit of my stomach and my mind just flew out of there, it flew and flew far away and all the way to the little white cottage, and I saw the little white cottage sitting under the bluest of sky all bathed in glorious, sweet sunshine, and I saw myself standing in the middle of the garden with arms and hands lifted up to the heavens, feeling the gentle, luminous tide of my soul; revived and joyfully free, and then, I opened up my mouth and heard myself telling those nice people the first thing that came to my tongue...   

Trying not to sound too foolish, or too crazy, I told them that they needed to wait on my response, because I was waiting to hear from another job I was really interested, which it is true only in part, and I may or may not be called for an interview with those other people, and all of a sudden I saw their disappointment on their faces, and saw how their mouth dropped and the nice lady attorney told me she truly appreciated me telling them about it out front, and being truthful, and the nice senior attorney asked me if I could give them my response by next week, no later that by next week and I promised them I would and said my good-byes and left feeling somber and happy and frankly, I just don't know what I truly, really should do, or shouldn't do, or why or even what I want... people's expectations of me causes such pressure.  My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. 

My today...

Days are gloriously warm, and the world is tinted in rainbow colors and every day the sun comes out in all its awe-inspiring, fresh-faced glories and it shines all day long, casting  countless, marvelous blessings all over the land... 

I have to share with you the cutest little story of something that happened to me yesterday while at Goodwill...  as I passed by a young mother and her darling little girl sitting in their shopping cart, I smiled and waved at the little girl, and continued on absent-mindedly... then, to my total amazement and surprise, I heard the precious little girl said... "mommy mommy, a princess"!  Can you imagine my shock?  I felt somewhat embarrassed, but also so moved by such ingenuity and purity of heart..  I may not be a princess in the real sense of the word, but I'm a daughter of the Kind of the Universe, and that's not metaphors.  I want to believe that what that precious innocent little girl saw in me it has nothing to do with appearances, and all with the beauty of He, who walks with me... "Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us!" Psalm 90:17

I think there is a beauty of soul which makes the plainest face radiant, and the homeliest features lovely...

Today, we drove for hours on roads surrounded by mountains clad in many shades of green, dotted with splashes of magenta from all the Redbuds blooming... how lovely the views, and how wonderful to ride with such beauty surrounding you...  everything looked beautiful under the spring light, and one could hardy took the eyes away from the little houses tucked here and there along the length of this stretch of the mountains, and the churches we visited were bordered by beautiful sceneries and the people were nice and kind, and the faith the same. 

At the thrift store I found the loveliest of treasures for just 1.99...  

Some beautiful Portobello By Inspire Paris coffee mugs that I just adore...  Ebay sales them for 26.99 each.  Wish I could had found some more. 

My coffee moments are so sweet~

And I cannot ask for a better and nicer and kindest friend to spend my coffee moments with, than with my "Fisherman".  

See you in the morning, my friend!