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!