Mornings at the cottage

Rise and shine. I’ve always held such fondness for that sweet old phrase. As though we are all little Suns. As though we are all someone’s Day...

Ah yes, have I ever mentioned how I adore mornings?  I love early mornings!  I love it when I feel like a rest of the world is the fast asleep and you’re the only one who’s awake and everything feels like it isn’t really real and you kind of forget about all your problems because for now it’s just you, the world and the sunrise. 

Little lights are turn on everywhere for a little bit...
Until the sun comes out...

Then we sit down for breakfast...
This is our July window... the view from our breakfast table each morning...

And outside feels dreamy, and the sun is shinning down upon the little white cottage in golden globules of joy, and blessings untold...

I then get to go to work and miss the rest of my morning hours.  I miss them so much... miss my feathery friends, the fishes, squirrels and the mystifying sounds of the woods... even at the office, my heart is silently the one with the messy hair, the dirty feet and that wild sparkle in its eyes... even with the huge amount of mosquitoes that comes with it, I love my garden, our little white cottage and its quiet surroundings, and I do miss all this terribly now that I work outside the home...

 Fairy lights on the coffee station and open shelves are kept on all day long.  I just love little lights!

Our cozy room...

I think is about to rain, and my heart is awaiting for that sound of thunder, and the mystical power of wind, and rain.  I hope you all are doing marvelous wherever you are... and that life is bringing happiness and comforts a-bunch your way!  Until our next meeting, stay happy!

LINKING TO:

VINTAGE CHARM

Disappointment

The months of July, and August in the south—what a big disappointment they are to me.  And nature is gobbling up the garden.  Overgrown tree branches cram flowerbeds merciless, lianas and woody vines hung down from trees forming living curtains above roses and elephant ears, defeating space, and overpowering their beauty, and the amount of weed, heat, mosquitoes and creatures that suck up your blood the minute you're out!—it all escapes the best of my efforts in trying to maintain the garden looking the way I'm used to, and want to.   I bleakly dub the south "compassionless"!  Would I do this again? I mean, would I create another garden in this dismay of a place?

When we moved to the south, I remember someone asking me if I was planning on creating another garden here, just as I'd done at the house in the roses, to which I responded immediately without the smallest hesitation... of course I would!  Well, ask me again! 

I remember wishing for longer summers and mellower temperatures when living at the house in the roses.  I remember wishing for a longer season to live my life in the garden, more lunches and dinners al fresco, more flowers and pleasures with Nature outside, and the saddest thing was, I truly believed I was to live my dream here in the south... what a disappointment it's been!  Yes, we have a longer planting season here, longer days, warmer days, a lot of flowers, but what's all this good for, when you can't enjoy it?

I know my feelings will dramatically turn around comes spring again, which is my favorite season here in the south, and the only time one can go out and still feel comfortable, but right now I'm rendered helpless. My little gardener's heart had been letdown and I'm disillusioned.  This wild nature of the south is claiming my precious garden for its own, and I have lost my desire to reclaim it back. Weeds and mosquitoes are nature's flotsam, and anarchists around here, and I am definitely finding myself drawn to a different botanical lifestyle... As it is, I'm already ready to put the south on my past, and move on again! 

  

Life at the cottage...

Once upon a time some years ago I promised myself I was going to surround myself in flowers—that was going to be my life.  So I created a garden, and then again a second one, which I carved out of the wilderness, somewhere in the South, where we now live.       

It was all worth it... the demanding and challenging wild nature of the South, the arduous work, the amount of sweat, mosquito, chiggers and spider bites, the poison ivy, oak and sumac, the deep mud, rain, scorching sun, the aches and exhaustion all worth it indeed.

So from this...

 We went to this in only three years... (same spot as above)

And from this... (I already had the blessing from above since that very first day I discovered our little white cottage... oh yes, look at those sun rays shining down!)

...to now this (same spot as above)

from this...

to this.. same very spot!  (look at how much that skinny tree in the above pic has grown!)

Another view from before...

and then now... you can hardly see that window on the right, now covered in vines...

And then the pond...

To now this... 

The kois are huge, and we have never seen our goldfish grown as big as the ones we have this year..

The Annabelle hydrangeas love kissing the water

There's an angel hidden behind the Elephant ears and Annabelle hydrangeas...

Can you see him!

I love it all!

During our cold winter months last year I decided to surround our little back porch in flower pots this year... so I did! 

I have no idea where I'm going to put all these many flower pots during our winter months, but I'll figure out something when the time comes...

Our veggie gardens are giving their precious jewels too!

We had never had such a huge crop as this year, 

our tomatoes are huge and healthy, and the green and orange peppers plum and beautiful... 

I am also embellishing our little white cottage with plenty of hydrangeas collected from the garden. They're so beautiful!  I love hydrangeas, and they are another dream come true, as they would not grow in my previous garden at the house in the roses.  The bush by the front door grows flowerets in tarnish colors and vintage beauty.  They're not pink, or blue or lavender like the other bushes, but all of these colors in a lovely faded tone.  I love it.  

I had a very good day at work today, and the plea I offered last night and again this morning where I kneel down in that little sanctuary under my window, has been answered.  "You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand". Psalm 16:11  

Yesterday and today

Last week:

We're sitting on the hot days of summer.   Summer is an umbrella over our heads, and although every bird station have been filled with all sorts of goodies, the comings and goings of the feathered kind had quieted down a bit.  As if birds have decided it is too hot even for them to move. 

It must be the time of the butterflies, I presume... for as it is, they have invaded the garden these days, and you can find them everywhere—those fairylike little things flickering white light everywhere in the garden.  Today, I saw the first black swallowtail... large, enchanting, and even mysterious.  It flew out of the woods and it came fluttering around me as if perhaps saying "I'm here... I'm here!"

Now that I'm again working, I find my little heart yearning for solitude more and more, and I am  terribly missing the freedom to enjoy those early morning hours of my days; hours always filled with delightfulness, and the magic waiting somewhere behind morning light.  

The moment I get home this is where I'd go... to the garden, to the last of the Hemerocallis still holding its deep purple and orange blooms, and to the lavender liatris home of the wispy butterflies.

Today...

We just got back home from our little trip to Florida, where we were able to spend time with mom and dad and finally find a place to put mom... my little heart is the jewel box where I'm keeping precious memories and feelings that refuse to take form, and bring out the somber colors of life into fruition... I'm burying my emotions somewhere deep in my soul, and I don't know whether this is a healthy or unhealthy way to respond to painful emotions, but alas, I still choose to trust in that Jesus who asleep in our boat... 

Butterflies

I am the little pebble that doesn't fit in—the wings, when all we see are feet.  And the garden is still the place my heart wants to live in.  The liatris are embellishing my heart in lavender, and the wispy, little white butterflies have arrived to my summer days.  My heart is a wanderer.  I must hold it back, if not it will drop down the unknown behind the horizon and it won't be found again.   

I pruned and thinned out the Crepe Myrtles.  The idea is to use an artful eye to allow fewer limbs do the job of many, and one of them had already started putting out their jewels in pink.  

My beautiful mother has starter her long slow process into the world of dreams, and is spending a significant proportion of her daytime hours asleep.  My heart is a wispy white butterfly when I think of her.  And I think of her all day long.  When my wispy butterfly wings are kissed by melancholy, they resemble tiny like fairies wings as sorrow reflects on them like light, and they would shine in a bright but brief, sudden, intermittent way.  That's how I look inside, or feel, when my soul cries.  And it's been crying a lot lately. My soul.  I don't want to.  I really don't.  Don't want to cry, or think too much or let my old soul descend into deep thoughts—like a frog into a bottomless pond.  Plump.  If I allow that, I'd be allowing my feelings to rush forth madly, and that would make my wings flicker madly, and frantically poignant, and heartbreaking.  So I won't do that.   

A post shared by @gypsycielo on Jun 26, 2017 at 12:27pm PDT

Yesterday morning I went to the garden before the kiss of dawn.  The sun hadn't come out yet, and I found myself planted in a magical world where it was just my flower-soul wedged to the earth and Nature and silence and the silence of God. Have you ever heard the silence of God? It speaks, really—that dark silence. You just have to understand it.

I'm going to sit at the edge of the moon and make new footprints all over my soul.  The magical time of childhood to stand still, and the pulse of the living earth to press its mystery into my living blood.  I want everything new.  A new moon a new earth a new her a new me, and one day I will be awaken too... to the foundation of all abundance.