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.”

Life

The month of August should had started right, but it didn’t, and the relentless heat of end of summer is a dark butterfly with a demon name—Acheron.  My feet walk on mud, my heart has been entombed—confined to fear and disquiet-ness of the soul. But we’re fine.  All is well.

The night before we left on our Florida vacation I went for a late walk around the neighborhood. Pastry-goodness evening fragrances, burnt orange skies at the dying of day; when the last light shines faintly over a terracotta color world for just a few moments, before turning from dark pink to cerulean black to the darkest black. 

It was a different kind of a walk; infrequent and wonderful and full of those mysterious graces, hardly ever felt on a typical daylight walk.  My soul felt delimited by a strange sense of peacefulness, as silence gently unfolded upon the world.  Not a sound, not a bird to coo the night away.  The streets, emptied of mundane sounds and people felt warm and cozy under the end of July summer breezes.  Until all of a sudden, it felt as if I was walking on sacred ground and I could see, or sense, the presence of angels all around on soaring wings… angels hovering above our quieted neighborhood, above softly illuminated houses and above my head in a hush of glory and supervision of the mortals…

Two days later, on the second day of August, my long-life friend, companion and my dear Fisherman suffered a heart attack as we were driving the Florida roads to meet my sister and her husband. We barely made it on time to save his life; and it could had not been a more providential episode as my sister, who works on the medical field knew exactly what to do, the hospital only minutes away, he was lifted by helicopter to the nearer heart hospital where amazing doctors were already waiting for him.  “A widow-maker”, they said it was, but he had angels all around him, and miraculously, even his heart didn’t suffer much.  He’s on the way to mending himself to health and a better way of life through diet and medical care.  We are home.  We rest in the knowledge and faith that we dwell in the shelter of the Most High and rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  I’ve been living some stressful times for a while now, but the LORD is our refuge and fortress, and in whom I trust.

Always good to see you around friend!

Blessed be!

In the pink...

The garden is swathed in its pink garments these days... 

Pink is the color of the end of July!

...with so much pink outside, it is only natural to want to imbued the inside of the house with some of the same shades.  So I did!

I brought in some pink pillows, some flowers some books, and some gold accents to mix with everything, and I gave a totally different look and feel to the living room.

I'm liking what I see, but it won't be for long, as I am not a pastel girl when it comes to decorating our nest. So back to the more modern approach of black white and gold soon!  

What do you think?  Like it, not?

Roses of end of July

The garden has been gifting me with a sudden outburst of roses again.  I have been mending the soil, fertilizing, pruning, spraying them with Neem Oil and making sure they get a proper amount of water, and I’m sure I’m seeing an improvement… at least on the Chicago Peace and the floribundas Unicorn roses in the epicenter of the garden.

After I freed her up of surrounding perennials that were suffocating her, the Gemini rose is finally putting on buds that have started to open in a lovely blend of pinks with darker edges, and the French lace and Paradise rose (the one I stole from the little white cottage) have been also improving.  I can’t stop admiring them and begging for a stronger profusion. 

I can read my list of roses; that one I kept since we originally bought this house back in 2005 over and over again, and never get tired... never cease to admire my vision back them…. What a collection I had!

The majority of those roses are now gone, and most of the ones left are only giving a meager number of flowers.  I don’t know what else I can do to change or improve this; if it isn’t to start from the beginning again… but for now, I am happy with what I have, and with what the garden has to offer me…

 Including the Butterfly bushes!

On the other side of the garden towards the entrance path, the Love roses are doing splendidly. This Love grandiflora rose bush was a Mother’s Day gift to me from the Fisherman in 2008.  It is a beautiful red blend with a white reverse and a strong fragrance. 

How fortunate I feel to have been able to reclaim this old garden back and call it ‘mine’ again.  How splendid and wonderful this world of roses is to me!

I love how the window to our master room looks from the outside with the fairy lights inside shining through lace at dusk...

...and at any light of day!

...it looks cute from inside too!

I hope you are having a beautiful summer... enjoy every minute of it, because sooner than soon it will be gone. The world will be covered in a cobbler crust of brown sugar and cinnamon and before you know it, autumn will be here!

The summer garden

July 19—not even 9:30am yet and I’m already crashing—literally. As much as I love working outside, I could had never been a cherry picker, or a grape picker, or a field worker.  I’m a total failure working under the scorching sun of summer.  My strength is weak, and fleeting… and thus, pruning the garden this morning had once again proven and confirmed all of the above.  

Ah, the perennials!  Fleeting as they can be, they are such an unruly bunch.  Right after they finished blooming they must be pruned down to the ground if you want to keep the aesthetic of the garden flowing.  The Shasta daisy were already tumbling down; leggy and unaccommodating as they are, and the Virginia creeper on the west side of the garden was growing without control, and so was with the herb garden; needing a good tidying up. This is the second time this year that I’ve pruned the viburnum snowball bush, and the effort was exhausting and arduous. 

Once long ago, behind that wall-tall Shasta daisy road, on the west side of the garden, a dwarf Burning bush used to grow there.  It dried out, and it needed be removed from the ground up roots and all—and what an ordeal that had been!  But it’s all done now.  The support where one of the Virginia creeper vine stands needs to be repaired soon, and the black-eyed Susan bushes hiding behind the Shasta daisy will need to be moved to another location.  But under this heat, I can only do so much, even in the early morning hours. 

On the other side of the garden, all those daylilies growing too bushy and too desiccated were removed for good today too.  The mysterious tall type of a perennial that’s been growing since the beginning of spring, but haven’t put a single flower yet was removed as well.  I may later regret having done this, but whatever these were, they were taking too long to put flowers, taking too much space in the garden for nothing, and it just had to be removed.  In the old good days of this garden, I would had never done that. Every plant and leaf here were a sacred thing to me, but now I don't want to waste time doing that. Life is too short, days too fleeting, summer too short.  I dislike something and out they go.   

The other day I went to see my little pond and was utterly surprised to discovered that a new garden creature had moved in!  His name is Maurizio (he’s Italian), and he has made my little pond, his pond.  As you can imagine, I’m thrilled!  Happy as can be, tacky as I can be, happy being just my little tacky silly self… 

I always say: 'Share your happiness with the world, give other people that happiness and let it come back,' so I’m hoping that, even if he’s not real, seeing him in my little pond will make you happy too!

Hence, I will continue accumulating garden friends until the Fisherman throw them out or throw me out, because he doesn’t really like seeming them ‘round here, you know!  "Is tasteless", he would say.  But I’m tasteless, tacky, and cheap in many ways; particularly when it comes to my garden!  Oh well what can I say, that’s who I am… and when I am myself, that’s when I am the happiest.  And that always have good results! 

You’re my favorite garden friends!  There’s always this piece of my heart that smiles when I see you here.  So remember this... someone remembers, someone cares; your name is whispered in someone’s prayers!

Love and hugs!