Gypsy trails

August 18—Because the gypsy caravan started out much later than usual going up the hills that took them apart from the rest of the world, the Wild-hair girl and her Fisherman were left to roam this earth of God in search of a place to spend the night.  While on their way up the big mountains and forest, soon the sun started its descend behind the horizon.  It was a slow change at the beginning; almost imperceptibly at first, but all too well letting them know that night was quickly approaching.  They needed to find a place.  

They stopped at several campgrounds, but just like Mary and Joseph did on that holy night long ago, they couldn’t find a place to spend the night… so they kept going up and up the mountains, driving on the curviest of roads way up the tops of beautiful mountains and roads above the serpentine river down below… until finally, night started to descend upon them. By now it was imperative to find a place… and they did.

Finally, a place was found, but it was sorts of a different gypsy camp, for it was a place where people and other gypsies just like them would bring their horses and horse trailers and carriages with them, and where beautiful horses were roaming around and eating from special containers made just for them…

They prepared their dinner and went inside their gypsy caravan to read and watch movies until they felt very sleepy and went to sleep…  

In the morning…  what a beautiful surprise they were bound for!  A lovely, summer morning and the bluest most clear skies welcomed them to their horse-camp, and one of the most spectacular places of all the places they had stayed in a long while; brimming as it was with all sorts of wildflowers and wildlife.   

Never had the Wild-hair girl seen so many different flowers in one same spot!  She made huge bouquets with them to bring home…

The forest seemed to gleam under gentle sunrays, while the tall flowers swayed back and forth under warm breezes.  It was such a beautiful, tranquil place.  And they were so happy to have found it!

Summer

August 19—today, I planted two Black-eyed Susan plants in the border facing the porch, by where the big fountain stands.  And thus, I have started working towards accomplishing this little dream of mine of seeing the garden embellished with bright, yellow glories.  I also pulled out all the daylilies that have ended up exhausting my patience in my attempts of bringing this garden back to beauty and harmony.  For they all had become an eyesore; droopy as they were and overgrown with no flowers whatsoever; always taking too much space in the garden while obliterating beauty.  So, I was not to waste one more minute or effort on contemplation, in the hope of seeing them do better. They are all out of the garden now, except for one or two plants here and there.  And what a relief doing this has been.

Today I have also finished up dividing the clumps of Shasta daisies that were left on that part of the garden that had become too cramped and already too suffocated under these perennials’ abundant beauty.  Will they thrive? We’ll have to wait until next spring to see what survive and what not.  But I’m optimistic.  

The landscaping guys are quoting me a crazy amount for planting the three trees I need to conceal the two-story house directly facing ours on the back.  Such monstrosity that house is, and one discouraging vision—like a giant with two enormous eyes (windows) looking straight down at us while stripping us off of all sense of privacy and confinement in Nature. I will simply have to do it myself or find someone that can do it for less.

True to their rugged, mountainous origins, the crabapple trees are heavy with fruits; sour enough to set a squirrel's teeth on edge and make a jay scream.  But what a beautiful fruit display in the late season they are.  Plus, they’re useful too when it comes to firming up jellies, jams, and apple butter.

Birds, love them too, and often attack its fruits with gusto as the crop softens and ages with successive freezes in the fall.

And what’s not to love about summer?  Mornings are busy with the sounds and ways of nature, mourning doves cooing my hours, little birds singing little happy songs among branches heavy under their bounties, small breezes carrying the intoxicating scent of some unidentified tree, or shrub—sweet, with the taste of vanilla on the tip of my tongue.  And floating in the midafternoon sun illuminated atmosphere, the purple puffs of the Royal Smoke bushes; like some extraordinary and beautiful fairies of some mysterious places dancing in my very own gardens.   

I love summer—what can I say?  I dream and wish for it with such intensity during our long winters, that to wish it gone now when is in its highest phase is heresy to my summer loving heart.  So, alas, let us bask in all its graces for some time longer, let us rejoice in whatever dose of discomfort, or pleasure it has to offer us, for way too soon it will vanished from the horizon of time, only leaving us dreaming and wishing for it again... 

August reveries...

August is the cathedral of summer. And yet, if I sit on my chair on the upper floors and look outside my window, I see impending changes taking place on the horizon. Far in the outlying distance, over to where the mountains are, even though you can’t see them, but you know they’re there—faithful as they are; like some ancient proverb erased from the horizon by an utterly impassive sky, there lays secrets untold. Indications of what’s to come are forming. For there, in its very own cathedral of summer stand the tall trees, canopies already changing into their muted greens and burnt reds outfits, and the morning sun is the mayor indicator of it all; for it has started the process of mellowing down, and it has already acquired that yellow tinted quality to it—muffled and hazy, so proper of the autumnal light.  Yes, like children at play, we are tumbling down that old hill called 'summer' onto the new season.   

I see the changes all around me well too clearly. My favorite part of the garden—the path to the beginning of every enchanting moment has been changing too; gradually, but surely.

I love this unpretentious little pea pebble pathway that to me takes me to my favorite place on this earth. This is the entrance to my garden, the place where Black-eyed Susans and hostas sleep under the wild lushness of the Virginia creeper, and the place where voluntary snapdragons and wood ferns play a magical tune with summer breezes. This is the place where I’m the gypsy of my heart and the Alice of my Wonderland.

Billowy grasses and dry-climate perennials give this pebbly path a rugged look, while the little round table and chairs, that old flair of the French cafes without the commotion of the big cities.

It is a magical place to me, and perhaps it really is because, that’s the sacred ground where I’d usually come to pray and just be that humble child before her Father... it is the most private place in the garden, and one of my favorites.

A new crocosmia bush is growing there now. Cousins to the gladiola, with brilliant flame-red flowers, and a tall habit, and at the far end a butterfly bush in purple glories…

Lavender garden phlox will be hugging this enchanting space next year... 

And perhaps one more rose in here? 

Yellow yellow… I love the color yellow, and these little yellow flowers are the queen of my garden this year... I want more of them, more more!

And then, before you enter the garden... this to welcome you into it!

Happiness and mystery and strange creatures all mingle and live here; teaching us about the wonder and the mystery of existence...  and I… I am that little girl living her life under the soft moonlight, the shimmering sky, the rays of the moon, and bunch of sparkling stars, I have nothing I have everything, I have just what I need and my dreams are beyond the clouds. 

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.”  (Beryl Markham, West with the Night).

Hotchpotch

I sit on top of my days and count my hours in rose petals.  Count them in quiet blessings too, and in the fact that though my feelings come and go, God’s love for me does not. 

The month of August has its own song to sing.  A song that carries through its notes, the color of emeralds and the murmur of rivers, and the garden sits upon its minutes and sings a proper tune.  The tunes and sounds of bees and wasps floating about the flowery clusters of the Virginia creeper, wild grasses swaying in midday breezes and the fire that solitude presses against my lips.

August is rose bouquets in the house and salmon and summer squash with basil and pineapple chucks.  Happy to spend my hours here—under the heat of August and the songs of summer.

The garden is a different garden than that of the months of May and June.  A hallowed emptiness hangs over it, motionless and hot. It is emptied, too, of birds and those winged fairies of the air, the butterflies, with only the common house finches and Mourning doves for visitors, and a single, solitary squirrel, owner of the neighborhood. 

Rain… I dream of you. For it hasn’t rain around here from that time at the beginning of May, and my soul yearns for the cloudy music of rainy days—that wet tic-tic-tic spring happiness and the scent of wet earth and young leaves.

I miss the wood-wandering cats of my yesterdays, cicadas in midsummer and fireflies in June. Miss the ghostly fog after a rainy night, spring peepers in the pond and rabbits quietly munching all over the weed garden.  My soul years for something I can’t name. I long for it, and I don’t know what it is.

I gave the garden a deep pruning day, the other today—8/8/18.  This date holds a resonance all its own: Balance. You'll reap what you've sown. And what have I sown?

Roses and magic… magic when I come out here at the tender solemn dawn-time and stand out and throw my head far back and look up and up and watch the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the eastern sky almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands of years.

I finally had to change my jogging route the other day.  Those big dogs at the end of the curb on the old Amity road just terrify me.  They give a hoot about their so called ‘invisible’ fence, but then, again, what can one expect of an ‘invisible fence’?  And thus, I am not taking that route again.  Running through some safer and less vehicle congested roads it really makes a difference on my nerves.  

I have been unintentionally working on collecting more art for my artsy walls.  I have to stop doing this I know, but I keep finding these beautiful canvases, paintings and work of art that I cannot put away and must bring home with me… cheap stuff that are always one of a kind, unique cheap stuff that I must have, because I love the small things...

I have brought in from the garden a few bouquets this year, and my Shabby Chic-romantic-girly room has been feeling happy and pink all throughout spring and summer!

On July 25 I bought and planted two crocosmia plants.  They are standing on the side garden path, aka the enchanted path and one is already dying out. 

I have bought a new laptop.  It took me two days to figure it out and set things the way I like it.  I lost my iPod on the airplane on our way to Rome last June.

I love how my little Pine tree looks all lighted up in the evening when the sun goes down and shadows start to creep in… I used to keep it lit all day and all night along with all the other dimmed lamp-light and fairy-light in the house, until the Fisherman got me some Sengled Element Light Bulbs, put an app on my phone, and now I can turn on and off every light in the house with just a click…

I truly value and appreciate all of you, and I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all the comments you leave here and for your concern on how life unfolds upon my soul… I don’t think I could ever express well enough, and deep enough how much you all helped me and reassured me during those dark winter days last year, after my mother passed.  And now this with my dear husband.  I consider all of you my friends, friends from here and there, from nearby and afar and sometimes, I even find myself lifting you up in my prayers.  Although I don’t know your specific needs, I do know your names, or your bloggy names, and they are on my lips when I run upstairs to meet with my Heavenly Father. 

Thank you again for being here with me time after time.  My husband the fisherman is doing splendidly.  We were finally able to find a doctor here at home, a good doctor who’s looking after him and making sure that all of our questions are being answered.  Sometimes it is hard for me to fathom all what we went through on those Florida roads did really happened. It was real, and not just a bad dream. It could had been so bad, and yet all is well; probably better now after the medical procedure he had; something of which we hadn’t the slightest idea how much it was needed.  

Ah my friends… “All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”