Late summer days

A new kind of a breeze is running through the garden these days.  It's cool, and light, and it's lifting leaves and spreading petals everywhere. Temperatures have dropped, and my soul can already hear the voices of the new season calling my name.

I so love those slow hours of the tired summer spent in the garden. The days are polished with morning haze, and nights are turning chilly and the insects have gone to sleep early.  I wish I could retain theses moments and days forevermore in my heart, so I can later come back to them and bask in this joy...

The garden is slowing down too, but it still is much alive, and the hummingbird couples that live here are a charming playful little thing to watch... going from flower to flower wherever they see red.  The elephant ear plants have been growing, growing... growing to Jurassic plant sizes.  Whenever I go by them I can almost feel the ground trembling under the feet of those enormous brachiosaurus and diplodocus that must live somewhere deep down in my woods.

Yesterday, one of my Paradise rose bushes bloomed overnight. 

I cut its jewels, and made a lovely bouquet. 

I love this tarnished vase. It is a wide-mouth and I can fill it with lots of roses and any other combination of prettiness found in the garden... flowers, herbs, branches and more.  

Every hour at the little white cottage bestow it's own magic and beauty.  At 9:00am the living room and master bedroom get bathed in golden globules of sunshine and magic.  Everything there is a game of light and shadows, and wherever I look there's magic, and whatever I see I love.  Then at 2:00pm is the peaceful front porch where I would sit down and wait for the yellow school bus to go up the hill while I wave at every little boy and girl that never wave back, or even see me, but I still do...  at 5:00pm, it is the back garden towards where the woods meets the garden, or where the garden ends and the woods takes over.  It is flooded with light.  Mellow, ochre light and peacefulness and twinkling light among branches and leaves.  It truly is a magical place at that time of the day, and I cannot love my little world any more than I already do.      

I am praying-praying-praying and hoping that this beast of Hurricane Irma will move away far-far-far way and drop dead into the ocean away from all my FL friends and blog readers and people from everywhere and my dear ones who are all bundled up together at my sister', hoping and praying too. Such precarious days our entire world is living these days... more evidence that Jesus will soon return!

Take care, and be safe!

The moon

Did you get to see the full moon last night?

Round, yellow-orange like a perfect Mimolette cheese, and as magical as ever... a moon for when mysterious things happen and wishes come true.

Up the hill where all those tall trees stand in the front of our little white cottage, the moon was seen... coming up among those trees, as if rising from the ground... That's the view I get looking out from our front porch.  You see, our cottage is located right on the bend of two hills.  One coming up and one going down. Or vise-versa, depending on the direction you're coming, or going.  It all depends on directions. So if you're coming up the road from that certain hill all you will see is our roof—our little white cottage buried down at the bottom of that hill, but if you're going up the other way, then things stand higher up, and all you'd see are the tip of your neighbor's roofs and the moon right almost at the feet of those trees... something like what you see here...

It was getting darker very fast as I was out there taking pictures, and down that hill, the little white cottage looked mysterious, and quiet, and I felt the magic of ages wrapping up my soul in orange light... 

...the moon reigning over my little world, glowing down in its full splendor at all those willing to look up, or be out there photographing it.  What a magical moment that was!

And down the hill our cozy nest awaited!

So dark, and quiet!

Nights at the little white cottage are always so beautiful and dark, and I love the ambiguity and delicious mystery and coziness that surrounds us.  Nights in the country have no comparison... I would always prefer those country nights over noisy city nights.  The more when you get to live in a magical little white cottage, tucked away in a wood where fairy tales abound... a place where haunting beauty and magical strangeness surround you, and you get to live in a world where anything can happen. Frogs can be the handsomest of gentlemen, a thicket of brambles can hide a witch's shack deep in its floors, and a girl can fly with fireflies and dance with fairies... what else can one ask for!  Oh do tell me, where you out there adoring the moon too!

Life unfolds...

I cannot exactly tell whether if it is something to do with Hurricane Harvey approaching our neck of the woods or what, but the weather has drastically changed over the last 24 hours, and it is stormy and rainy, and high winds have been carpeting the land with a layer of leaves and broken branches everywhere.  Strangely, some of the leaves have already taken the colors of fall, and although it is only the beginning of September, it already feels wintry like around here, and the voices of the winds are frightening, and lovely at the same time, and my soul is one with all I see and all I hear... a soul that must had been born on the tip of raindrops and of the peaceful silence cocooned in the eye of the storm.  

Everything in the garden has come to a stop.  The Crepe Myrtles are done putting all their flowers, I'm afraid.  And butterfly bushes and the Knockout roses are looking scraggy, and long-legged.  Two new lavender blooms are now embellishing one the two Paradise rose bushes, and the gigantic elephant ears are still withstanding this rather marvelous blustery weather.   

I love it... love it all, but recognize that the voices of the storm frightens me and I'm a wimp.  When all that frenzy of rain and wind among swaying canopies and breaking branches above my head comes too close, all I know how to do is to run across the garden to the safety of our little white cottage, which is, parenthetically speaking, a most charming little shelter of fairy lights and peacefulness inside... 

 

When I go to sleep at night and it is stormy and the wind is making a lot of noise outside, I sometimes would think about all those trees out there in front of our cottage forming that tall barricade I so love, so bare and tall as they are, that if the wind would knock them down, they would come to rest right on top of where our bed is under our roof.  Right there.  Where I sleep.

Yesterday, I finally had my handyman Oscar helped me add legs to that old dresser I spoke about awhile back, HERE. 

The day I painted this dresser I wasn't feeling well, and did such a bad painting job...  but that's the beauty right there.  You see, because I did such a bad job, or not really caring how I did it, or how it would turned out, is why this piece turned out looking as awesome as I think it does.  Shabby Chic awesome in its two or three tones of blues, greens and navy!  And because this happened by chance, and not intentionally, is the reason why it looks really good to me, or at least acceptable under the label "shabby".  And that's fine with me for now too.    

Right after I brought those short legs home from the thrift store I realized that they may not suite this 70's dresser, but I felt in love with it, and the intricate design and wanted to try adding legs to it.  All four legs were only five dollars, and I'm cheap like that, and I like how much I pay for it.

I had those legs stored somewhere in the garage since the beginning of the year and had almost forgotten about them until I found Oscar this week.  I still think they were not the right legs for this dresser, but that's fine with me.  I decided to paint them in gold to match the pulls, and I love the contrast.  So here's the 'before' with no legs..

And now with it...

I'm cool with that!

What do you think?

ps:  We will know for sure what paths our lives will be taking as far as moving back to the North, sometime next week. A lot of emotions are going through our minds and hearts these days, but we are fine with whatever the outcome may be.  Whatever it is, is...

Thank you for letting me share my life with you... thank you for listening and for all the input and encouragement and love I receive in the form of comments... it means a lot to me.

Returning home...

My heart is in disarray these days, and after spending this last week with mom at the assisted living home where she now lives, I have come back home with separation anxiety... my little heart-house feels empty, and darkened by a dreadful feeling of anticipated losses and anticipatory grief...

I have always been very close to my mother.  Attachment is an emotional, long-lasting bond that a child forms and, for some of us, this bond last forever... it does not matter how old I am, we are bonded to each other with "emotional glue" — bonded with love.  The thought of losing her is overwhelming.  I cannot speak on this any further, my heart is shut, and thus I will sit on a field of wildflowers and pretend I'm Alice in Wonderland, or Peter Pan, or Jack climbing on a beanstalk that goes way up to some other better world...

Our bedroom feels cool, or cooler upon our return, and I'm loving all this pleasant fusion of grays and whites... this soft brightest when morning sun hits the windows and the room gets illuminated, and dulled up at the same time by the magic of neutrals. 

Mirrors... I love mirrors 

I would follow this trend again and again, 

in whatever house I live...

They add such glamorous feel to this room.  

Would my white, mirrored wall look better if I paint it in a darker color?    

Say, something like this moody color on this other wall here?

I love this paint so much!  The name is Kendall Charcoal, from BM

The end of August has fully clad the garden in its finest finery.  Roses, crepe myrtles, azaleas, vines and butterfly bushes are clothed in their most excellent showy garments, and I sit in my red garden chair and can hardly believe this is all mine... all mine!  What glorious, little paradise I have created here.  Although I am sure I hadn't work alone.  Certainly, this work of art had not come solely from my fallible, human hands. Angels must had worked very hard next to me.  I am humbled, and truly amazed by every precious gift, small and big, that have been bestowed upon me these past four years.  I cannot even begin to mention all the dreams and desires of my heart that have come true... one by one.  One day, I will share these stories with you, but for now I remain humble, and expectant of what's to come; completely aware that what is truly important are the simple, basic things in life... honest, pure emotions surrounded by the majestic beauty of nature, and love for each other...

Thank you for being here with me, my friends!  I count you as part of all the blessings I've been showered with on this life...  THANK YOU!