My magical garden

Spring…. May, June!  My heart rejoices in days like these; days filled with rose petals, lilac scent, dainty fairies Columbines and spiral beauty lupines.  I want to dance where nobody can see me, sing out loud sing out of tune, sing with my heart!  And I do!  The garden has grown into a small paradise. Birds come from everywhere looking for it, robins are making nest amidst the thick of vines and doves are cooing their love atop roofs and treetops above the garden.  The other day a quail couple found their way here, and I saw them feeding from the grown along morning doves… how lovely and how special finding them here it was.  

The columbines have multiplied in magical ways and the peonies are plumping up.

Last Sunday, May 26, after we got home from camping we decided to have lunch at some Mexican restaurant in town.  Just by it, there’s a D&B store and what a marvelous temptation it was seeing so many lovely flowerpots displayed outside, fountains and tree and dozens of roses to choose from…. I was instantly smitten by the irises…

Of course, I ended up buying two, a Tour De France—a beauty in two colors; white in the crown and a deep yellow on the bottom petals.  I have never seen anything like it, so beautiful and delicate… I also got another delicacy, an Iris Beverly Sills, in light coral pink blooms.  Both to go on mom’s little garden where the lavender and deep wine irises stand as queens.  I can hardly wait to see these two multiplied!

 

Every day on my walks through our neighborhood I have to stop by a certain house to admire the number of perennials growing in a particular bed closest to the street.  What about if I ask its gardener for a small cutting?  I always ask myself every time I go by… Finally, the other morning, I mustered enough courage to go knock on the door and do precisely that—asked for a cutting of the most unfathomable yellow irises I have ever seen!  Luckily, the lady of the house agreed.  “You can pull some stems”, she said, “and I hope you can enjoy them in your own garden”.  How sweet!  I run back to the flowers, but it was impossible to pull from the roots without breaking the steams… I needed a shovel!  And of course, I wasn’t going to stop there…

Later that day, I got in my car; shovel and pot ready for the job, and went back to that house. A thief stealing flowers in plain view!  That’s how I felt.  Tomorrow, I will take a bouquet of roses from my own flowerbeds to the nice lady to properly thank her. Because that’s how life works for me… you take you give back.  And don’t forget to give just because… no cause whatsoever, no expecting anything in return.

 

I love filling my garden with all sorts of whimsical thigs…

I create little birdbaths and garden embellishments using colorful dishes from second hand stores, then I hide them among the roses and bushes…

The crystal that I gung from tree branches have a magical hour all of their own; around evening when the last sun hit them and they sparse light all over the garden in round shinny spots, that move and sway from branch to branch and leave to leaf, hitting my window at the same time, as if calling me to turn my head and to look outside…

The columbines—those little fairies of the garden are all opened swaying magical little bodies in afternoon breezes; as if ready to take a fight into some unknown magical places…

I’m eating light—that’s what I’ve been doing in my garden every day, if it is not raining.  Because, it’s been raining so much here, that one can almost recognize this place any more… and now, from a high desert, we’re almost tropical.  Tropical without the heat and humidity, because here it is always cool and dry and wonderful to be outside rain or not.

It is impossible not to surrender openheartedly to the beauty of creation on days like these. Days like flowers and petals and mourning doves.  Maybe Francis of Assisi was, on the whole, a cataphatic mystic like me, or maybe Thérèse of Lisieux in her exuberant moments, but the fact is, who wouldn’t be a mystic when you’re surrounded by this, or this, or this!

 

I can hardly believe what my eyes are seeing in this garden this year—the glorious green explosion, the number of roses and petals, the way it has developed since last year, the magical changes that have taken over it… I can hardly believe this is the same garden of only a year ago.  The roses were practically all gone, the shrubs overgrown and wild, the perennial plants scraggy and lanky while vines covered trees and lawn.  What a marvelous change!  

Every spare moment is needed to keep a degree of control in a garden, as weeds struggle for space among flowers and climbers scramble upwards. But all so worth it!  The relentless routine of work, the love, the rain and sun—blessings that have transformed my once forgotten little garden, again into this wonderful wildness of petals, forms and scent that it is today…

I am so very fortunate.  When I look around and see all the beauty I’m surrounded with, I can hardly believe how fortunate and blessed I am to have been giving the opportunity to come back to this old garden and make it mine again…