Time...

Summer has arrived in a blink of an eye into our little world.  The weeds are here to stay, the mosquitoes have moved in and the woods has crept in.  

Nature has this incredible, wild way of swelling up, growing up, moving in, mounting, expanding, spreading and swallowing up everything its green mouth touches it. 

Fleeting too it is under the wrath of time.  Time is the rat that cuts off the thread of lire in this universe. There is nothing in this world which the all-devouring time will spare.  And if one day the garden is dressed up in all its glories, the following it has already started to die away...  

And thus, the white flower of the privets which only at the beginning of the week were in all their glories have already withered by the end of the week. 

And so it has been with the irises of  Monday.  

The beauty of a moment is that it's fleeting. By its very nature, it slips through our fingers, making it that much more precious.

We are being swallowed by the serpent of time...

No one can stop the flow of time. But a moment captured in the frame of the heart will never disappear. That will be shown at the bottom of our hearts, and will always give off a great feeling. Sweet and bitter.

The cobalt dresser

Last week I was finally able to worked on a long overdue project—an old dresser I had parked in our garage all throughout the winter and hadn't had the time, nor the 'urgency' to work on it...

But now that days are considerably getting warmer and warmer, and our garage was really due for a spring cleaning, I couldn't postponed the task any longer.    

This particular piece was sorts of an ordeal.  Because I got the wrong paint to start with, I had to repaint it not twice, but three times, using three different paint color.  

Now, don't ask me why this happened... I'd only say that this was not purposely done.  OK, I'll explain...  you see, I'm not good at paying attention to 'unimportant' details, such as choosing the right kind of paint from the shelves at Michael's, and thus I ended up buying acrylic paint instead of chalk paint and only noticed it the moment I started painting.  Urgrgghblablah!!  Yes, that's how scatterbrained I am! Thank you!  :)  

Considering that you'd have to drive 40 miles to return to Michael's, because we don't have one anywhere near here, I decided to mix the acrylic paint with some leftover chalk paint I had left from another project.  The mixing was good, but the color wasn't.  I wanted a cobalt blue, and because the chalk paint I had was more teal than anything, I wasn't satisfied with the result.   So I had to make do with what I already had, and what I could find at Wal-Mart.  So after my third round painting this big boy I ended up with a 'Frankenstein' sorts of a thing and/or dresser which, BTW I ended up loving! ;)

The end result was unexpectedly pleasing, and coincidentally one that I ended up celebrating, as the lighter blue paint bled through the darker blue, and it gave this piece a wonderful blue-green patina in different corners and places that I just love.  

It's hard to see the mixture of colors on my photographs, but it looks pretty cool.  I could had tried for a fourth round of paint, but I was too tired and decided to leave it as is.  Besides, I'm sure that if I had purposely intended to achieve this, I would had failed badly.  So I was very proud of my luck, and gave it for perfect!

I painted the hardware in gold, and voila... I now have this lovely vintage dresser sitting in our dining room as a sideboard holding linens, candles, china, and silverware.

I also got this 'before' brown and unattractive thrift store 'thing' that I spray painted it in gold to match with the hardware of my dresser, and made it into a beautiful planter... I then put the planter on top of my newly painted dresser/sideboard, and made it look perfect~

Found these royal blue little dishes at our local thrift store and had to bring them home too...

Garage sales, used, thrift stores old dressers—love them all.  

Wish I could take a picture of the entire front of the dresser, 

but the room is small and the large square table doesn't let me...

But you can get the idea.

Love that pop of color among all the black and white

...and roses on the table for added prettiness ;) 

Dressers are one of the most versatile pieces of furniture you could own.  Moving a dresser out of the standard bedroom use to think outside the box with new ideas for this common piece of furniture it's something I often like to do.  There are endless ideas and that is what makes dressers my favorite piece of furniture ever! 

I've been spending whatever free time I have during my days in the garden, from the early morning to late evening.  The privets are in flower and the scent wafting from them is intoxicatingly glorious.  It is breeze and warm, and the atmosphere is free from those flying creatures of the air that suck the life out of you. The hummingbirds have returned to the land, and the garden is a composition of roses and woods all wrapped up by the songs of mourning doves and wood frogs.  One of them would start their enchanting songs, and from the other side of the pond immediately would come the answer of another.  And it is a chorus out there, a halleluiah of a moment, and an open-air concert all the same. 

I want to take more pictures of the garden, and I do!... I have millions of them and I want to blog more about the garden and post more pictures too... for the reason that I am in love... totally and absolutely in love with my surroundings.  But I must be wise and let you rest, in case I've started to bore you.  Are you this crazy-in-love with your garden too?     

“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.

Believe, and be happy!

If you’re in my sun-dappled woodland garden and a large, black butterfly with iridescent blue splashes flies by, most probably it is a Spicebush Swallowtail.  You'll also see the tiny yellow-white butterflies dancing among the spicebush and sassafras, and if you're lucky enough, a Tiger Swallowtail would flutter all over you, as if skipping on stepping stones... 

Ah yes, the butterflies have arrived.  Side by side with the hummingbirds they've arrived.  And now they will dwell in my garden for another magical summer. 

The air carries the magical scent of the wild honeysuckles—sweet, and poignant, and altogether as enchanting as it can be...

The other day while I was trying to steal a whiff of their perfume, I caught a glimpse of a blue dress trailing behind a figure with blonde hair among the trees in the wood. For a moment I stood fixed on the girl in the sky-blue dress, then with one arm stretched out towards her I heard my voice shouting:  "Alice!"  But Alice would not turn to face me...  Was I dreaming?  Oh yes I must had been dreaming!

And who wouldn't!  It is a fairytale sorts of a place around here these days.  Small cotton-like fairies float the atmosphere all over my little world.  The air is filled with fluffy white clouds—and not just the kind you see in the sky.  I'm referring to the airborne fluff of the cottonwood trees which, as the weather gets warmer, let their seeds fly, filling the air with what it looks like tiny white clouds... or fairies.

It almost look like it's snowing.  This is certainly a strange thing to see this time of the year, but luckily, the seeds have nothing to do with snow.  These trees are not actually related to cotton plants; instead, they are poplars, and they grow very tall and have very large leaves, and are all over my woods.   This kind of a 'snow', along with the return of the butterflies can only mean one thing here in the south:  Summer is approaching!

I have got my hummingbird nectar ready, and have filled both of the hummingbird feeders with their life's elixir... I am happy to see my little feathered friends returned, and as I walk my little Paradise-garden in the footsteps of Eve I feel blessed, and right at home. 

I have divided hostas and moved some others to specific spots, and some more suitable places.  Then, I bought an entire flat of white Impatients and have planted them all in the hosta garden.  I can already envisioned the gloriousness of green lush lovely hosta leaves and the purity and delicateness of white Impatients mingling together. 

The irises are in bloom—the first one in a white wedding dress, and more to be opening soon.  

I love irises and although they are a little slow in multiplying, they are finally doing their job after the third year of being planted.   

The privets are putting out their flowers, and the trees are filled with tiny purple globules that soon will be opening up in small clusters of white exquisiteness and a lovely, distinctive sweet scent.  The garden will again be filled with scent... another scent, a new whiff of a different perfume, and all the Elephant Ears have started to come out too.  Some are breaking the ground while still others are already unfurling small green heads that are but the promise of massive leaves and dazzling tropical beauty to come.  This year I have filled every emptied spot in the garden with them, including many of the flowerpots.  I can hardly wait to see them in all their beautiful glory!

The pond is looking marvelous with all and every one of its residents.  All the fishes are doing well, including the two kois, which are growing faster than fast before our very eyes, so it seems.  This is yet another wish of the heart come true.  The gurgling sound of water.  A little frog and fish pond... My soul soars with gratitude.  

We’re constantly communicating with the universe. I believe the external world is a direct reflection of our internal landscape. So in a sense we're creating a world of our own, our own wonderland.

Believe...

Create...

Be happy!

Spring has sprung

There has been a sudden explosion of colors and flowers in the garden, and the roses are the queen of my magical forest.

 This afternoon I cut some roses, and made my first bouquet of the year. 

The Elle rose... one of my favorite roses in my southern garden.  Blooms in the softest shades of apricot, cream and pink on a compact bush that's continuously blooming. 

I come home every day during my lunch hour, sit in the garden and share my food with the birds.  

Today, five or six mourning dove welcomed me home, they heard me come in and in a fast and bullet straight flight on whistling wings, settled on the highest branches of one of the trees surrounding the garden.  From their conspicuous perch they watched me and serenaded me with their haunting, melancholy call. 

After all that rain we had this morning everything is looking green, and supple, and totally magical. This is my truest place to be in the entire world, and this is that time of the year when I wish I could stop the clock of life's time and hold it perfect forevermore in every sense. 

The wild honeysuckles are in bloom right now.  I love how this twining climber takes over the tall trees in the woods, and how they tangle around branches, or dangle down from them like flowery paper streamers.

And whose nest is this, I have to wonder.  It is huge, and perfect, and I wish it belongs to some magical owl somewhere out there...     

Then this afternoon a heavy rain passed through the neighborhood again, turning greens into darker greens and blue skies into dark grays.  I closed my eyes and imagined what it would feel like to be in those woods skirting the garden.  A feeling of solitude crept in, and with it came the comfort of being hidden like a small child playing hide-and-seek, only she was both the seeker and the one who was hidden. 

 "Thirst drove me down to the water, where I drank the moon’s reflection" ~ Rumi

Don't forget to keep dreaming... there is a special plan for you as you travel through your life’s map. With the fire in your soul and your heart as a guide, everything will happen as it should.