Rainy days

I am so fortunate to live in a place where rain is a constant—like the sprinkle system that faithfully watered my roses in our garden at the house in the roses.

And it is always a warm, balmy welcoming sprinkle of life that lets you continue gardening under its charm, without being bothersome, or inconvenient. I am fortunate. 

And thus, after gardening under a light morning shower yesterday I came in… little lights were turned on here and there… 

 Gently dissipating shadows...

I love the sound of rain and the solitude it brings to the already peaceful space. What a privilege to make peace with God and others. Peace in our inner selves…

I like to listen to the music of the Native American flute of C. Nakai on those peaceful rainy mornings as I go around the house performing small tasks and always amazed and always grateful and always complacent to let my Heavenly Father transform my common days into thanksgivings and routine jobs into joy… 

The garden is already looking marvelous… the transformation is amazing.  I can hardly believe this is the same place of a few months ago…

Have a great day my friend... enjoy life as it is.  Make it better if you can and always always remember that life isn't always sunny (nor should it be), but when it is, it helps, and when it isn't, we often need to look within... 

Be blessed!

Cielo

LINKING TO:

BOUQUETS OF TALENT

Roses and painted Mason jars

All through my days I make rounds in my newly established garden to enchant my life… 

It is warm and the butterflies are finding their way here…

I’ve planted a Sioux Crape Myrtle that gives clusters of dark pink flowers… It stands right on the epicenter sort of speaking of our garden, and because I couldn’t wait for another small bush to grow and grace our space in some future time, I decided on a pretty good size of a tree this time. Thus, this Crape Myrtle is now the heart of the garden. Lovely, and promising in beauty and marvelous blooms to come. 

I have surrounded this tree with the spikes of pure white flowers of the First Lady Speedwell and the pink blooms of Veronique Pink Speedwells, and I have also planted at its feet a small plant called Angelonia, which I had never seen and it is also called summer snapdragon, with fascinating snapdragon-like flowers with beautiful colorations in purple, white and pink. It's the perfect plant for adding bright color to our hot sunny spaces and this tough plant will bloom all summer long. I love its spire like spikes of blooms. 

I am exciting about the huge variety of perennials you can find here… some variety I had never seen; others I have only read about. All beautiful and extremely hard to choose among. 

 

The Elle rose bush is in bloom… 

 The first roses of the season in our newly established garden.

Evocative of another garden in another place in another time...

I’ve been experimenting painting the inside of my Mason jars and I’d have to say that I prefer this technique to that other of painting your jars on the outside…

 

I love the “milk glass” finish and I love that the paint color clearly shows through the glass, but it still have that distinctly shiny appearance and smoothness to the touch, because the paint is viewed through the layer of glass, rather than being applied on the outside.   

I didn’t want to do all the swirling and twirling around the jar thing you need to do when pouring in the paint into the jars, so I decided to use spray paint instead of regular paint… I just sprayed the inside real good, and let the jars dry in the sun for a while.  A second coat got them all covered.  That easy.

I love love this sweet shade of pink…  Krylon Satin Ballet Slipper pink.

I didn’t have the heart to cut my Elle roses to make a bouquet, so I’m using faux this time.  I think any shade of pink, or purple roses will look fabulous in my newly painted pink mason jars… I don’t mind using faux roses at all.  In fact, I use faux often; particularly when I don’t have a better way to satisfying my need of them… 

LINKING TO:

HOME SWEET GARDEN

IVY AND ELEPHANTS
INSPIRE ME TUESDAY

In the realms of dreams

I woke up to a very early rain and thunder this morning.  I love it—love those special occasions when you’re laying in bed and in that stupor between the realms of sleep and reality you hear and see things that are not, and then you realize that although you are in a state of altered consciousness, you are neither submerged in the depth of sleep and, perhaps those things you thought you saw and heard were somehow true?

And thus you realize that indeed, it is raining. No, it’s more than that… there are rivers rushing outside your window and somehow the sky is trying to communicate something to you in the language of thunder?  And how remarkable and astounding the voice of thunder is when it is gentle and far-flung in the early, murky horizon. 

When I opened up the blinds on the window that's next to my bed, as I always do immediately after waking up, something caught my attention right away… something outside in the middle of the narrow country road across our cottage. A dead animal or something... A solitary raven was already there circling the carcass with cunning curiosity. He emitted an eerie cry and immediately two more crows dashed in and surrounded the thing on the road, equally indecisive on what to do with it. I felt extremely upset by it and sad, thinking that it was the little kitty that likes to come by and whom I’d seen late the previous evening strolling around before I went inside for the day. I could not stop staring at it, or thinking about it… 

Later on when we left the house that morning my husband mentioned that it was an opossum on the road, but I wasn’t too sure about it and I didn’t want to look. 

Hours later we were working outside in the garden when all of a sudden my kitty friend showed up. I saw him smelling the petunias in the clay flower pot, he discovered something hidden in the bushes and tried to catch it.  Then, he walked just by where I was standing all the while ignoring my joy, and my laughter and my “please kitty come here.. kitty kitty kitty” pleads.  I was so so happy to see him again!

This is him again under the bridge on the pond…

I snapped a few photographs, turn around for a moment and poof… gone he was.  I swear it’s the truth… he couldn’t be found anywhere albeit all my extra efforts.  Do you think that maybe there’s a secret door under the bridge on the pond that somehow connects to that other bridge on the other side of the garden down the edge of the forest?  You know the one… the Bridge to Terabithia?

Our world is linked to other worlds through secret passages you know… at least in my little world they do exist… we  can visit other worlds through magic portholes and magical mirrored doors and even by intricate secret passages in the garden where you can cross the fabrics of space and time.

Oh I think that’s the passage where fairies and creepy night creatures that live in the Privet behind our little cottage come to be… 

Oh dear, is my imagination running away with me again?  If it is, and you think I'm a little odd, or a lot odd, I hope at least you'd believe that your dreams do create a special kind of magic.. ;)    

I love this quote:

 Good night everyone!

Unpacking...

Last evening we brought home more boxes from our storage unit to sort things out… 

I’ve been busy unpacking things out this morning; unwrapping delicate glass, putting things away; giving more away... all the while rivers of emotions run through my veins…

I smile at times as I unpack things I had forgotten I had...

And sometimes I cannot help by crying a little bit too. It is always such a nostalgic thing to do. Unpacking things that had belonged to another place and lifetime it’s almost as opening a wound in your soul… a shadowy, indistinct window you want to crawl through and go back to the life you once had, but you know you mustn’t… you mustn’t get too close to that window because you know it’s going to hurt, and it messes up your vision; yet, you cannot help but going back…

If I think of my life at the present moment, there’s nothing more in my heart than gratefulness and amazement in it… amazement at how God has guided us and given us the desires of our hearts--those dreams of yesterdays in which my soul had dwelt through all those years of imprisonment of the spirit, now reality… I wouldn’t want to go back to that past, and I am slowly adapting to my present, but my girls remain in that past, and my heart yearns for their closeness, it yearns for rosy cheeks and little wet kisses on chilli mornings; to hear tiny feet running around the house like happy little birds on freshly snowed gardens… oh I knew this unpacking thing wasn’t going to do me any good… I just don’t like unpacking, that's all.

But oh yes, I must go back to my little life...

Be happy...

Keep the flame of faith alive

My kitchen looks messy this morning as I sort things out
and arrange them in their new places

Such a pretty mess...

I am spray painting more Ball Mason jars.  Experimenting painting them from the inside now. I found a whole box of them at our local thrift store -.25 cents each.  I think I shall go back tomorrow for more...

Have a lovely evening everyone!

Love

The wind

I love those occasions when I’m in the garden working on the flowerbeds and behind me come this strange and mysterious, and awesome sound… like a rushing river approaching my sacred space. Dominated by this resonance; this kind of a hum, or a swish of watertight, I turn around hoping with all my heart to discover what causes such magical songs in the privet… what kind of a phenomenon provokes this miracle? 

Then... there it is.  It is the wind. A rush of wind in the privet.  And when you look up all you see are those majestic treetops swaying side by side making music with the wind; intertwining branches and foliage and leafy heads under swiftly clouds… and whose mighty hands are those which seize them… and who is the One making them quiver as to create such magical rhythms?  It is almost as if the very Spirit of God moves over the privet, filling our space with peace and majesty.   

How magical, and astounding the sound of the wind in the Privet is to me.

There’s always something pretty blooming out there. I like to tease this bramble of nature that’s by the edge of my garden by just going as far as its boundaries goes and steal some of its blossoms from time to time. But I must be very careful. A whole new world rests there, in that strange wood, and it dwell there, too, myriads of creatures unknown. Nature is so wild and strange and dangerously unpredictable here and I have so much to learn about it, it is overwhelming at times. 

I decided that every dreamer should have a magical tree growing in her garden. We have some gigantic, gorgeous trees growing in our property, but they rest out in the woods where I don’t dare go. So I had to find the best one out of all the flimsy ones growing along the creek and decided that this was it… 

So here it is....

My magical tree!

and how I see it in my mind of dreams...

Truly magical! ;)

May the light of day awaken in you.

Love

LINKING TO: FISHTAIL COTTAGE GARDEN PARTY

Bits of my life...

Last Night: 

We just got inside from ‘drinking in’ the outsides in sips of amazement and cups of wonder and admiration, before we said our good nights—again, like every evening before turning in. And as usual, I am in awe and I marvel at the phenomenon and miracle of insects illuminating our summer evenings… fireflies dancing little diamonds in the dark. How magical and outstanding this vision is to me. It fills my heart with the purest of admiration and wishes of eternal thoughts. I am thankful and overjoyed to be in a place where this miracle takes place freely every night and thankful that I, too, can  be a partaker of quite an incredible and miraculous occurrence.

This morning:

I keep working the soil, digging, planting, emending. But the hardest job, it had to be the removal of the existing sod, which is just a field of weeds, by hand with nothing more than some basic tools found around the house; mainly a shovel and a rake. And I’ve been doing this everyday. After my husband leaves for work, I get to dress in the weirdest of all attires; my scrubby paint-splattered-soil-stained-color uncoordinated gardening attire, and spend hours emending the place. My hands are blistered. I need to learn to use gardening gloves. But how rewarding my toils are… oh the vision, my dreams, my ecstatic fervor. I can already see it all… the colors and textures, the potential. 

I remember when we moved here someone asking me if I was planning on creating another garden. I had to think about it for a moment, but not because I was doubtful in any way about my desires, but because the questions came to my brain like a strange and absurd cloud of ‘and why would I not’? 

I find out today that my feathered creature friends are deliberately helping me fill up my garden with flowers and color by transporting my seeds everywhere they think appropriate. They must be the gardeners of the air those birds who are doing me this favor I’m sure. And thus, my newly crafted flowerbeds are permeated with morning glories and moon flower seedling. Guess these birds must know their job better than I know mine because I’m not sure whether these vines can also serve as a groundcover too. 

The privets are still offering the last of their jewels—the white flowers with rare center-hearts in the shape of stars… all the wildflowers of the world seem to have piled up at the top of the trees where my spirit collects dreams and stories and wishes it could fly in fragrances and bird songs.   I love that from my very own backyard I can bring inside with me some lovely and wild and unique bouquets to embellish my whole house with…  

The flower of the privet...

Some pretty tiny yellow wildflowers I don't know their name

 

 The wild vinca growing in the woods that I'm transplanting all over my garden...

Love it.

Be happy

Be peaceful

And thanks for stopping by

Cielo