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…

Something broken...

It had been raining so much for the past two weeks around here, that the gypsies already knew they were predestined to be guided by rain… and thus, raindrops followed them through hills and valleys, all the way to their campsite… they had made peace with the thought.  Rain washes off the land of impurities and makes the soul of man clean as rushing rivers.  So even if the outcome was to be rained on, they still packed everything up and went along… 

 

They parked their gypsy trailer among the tall pines and vegetations of pine, fir, spruce, hemlock, larch, cedars and conifers... and down below; running through the earth like a live gash, the river in all its glory.  Unstoppable waters rushing down unseen pathways without ever stopping… to where?  

 

 

  

It was a smaller campsite this time, with fewer people and wholly immerse in Nature and the silence which is only broken by rain and the music rivers bestow.  They immediately made acquaintance with nearby fellow campers and gypsies from other tribes and different paths of life with whom they happened to be sharing the same time and the same space under the same sky… and then went to prepare their lunch…

 

 

The day was already cold and behind dark clouds you could already see a storm brewing, but lunch was good, and watermelon for dessert the best.  Then, the Fisherman went down the river edge to engage in this revelry of fishes and rushing waters and hours spent just doing that…  

 

 

Our new gypsy friends Lilac and her husband Dru came down too, they fished and talked while I played with their cute little Maltese, Marla… 

 

 

Fishes were nowhere to be seen and soon big drops started falling, making me to rushed back to our gypsy trailer and hide in my cozy nest…

 

 

I made coffee, got my books and my computer out and started this conversation with you…

  

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9:59 pm: Darkness embracing the rain-laden land in soft stillness; like the sounds of lovers in love.  Outside our window is pitch dark no voice is herd no children at play, it is cold and for some reason, we are sitting inside our cozy nest evoking gone by eras, remembering the Lawrence Welch show, the pretty girls in long dresses and handsome young men, the voices the songs and dances of yesterday.  Ah, how time flies and how swift life is. 

Inside the gypsy trailer it is dark, all lights are out, with only the exception of the soft glow of our computer screens… like fireflies in the night, illuminating the darkness.

 

 

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Morning. For some strange reason, I woke up feeling heavy and ill-humored. What happened later, I cannot explain in exact details, nor can I either explain whatever got into me to have reacted the way I did.  It could had very well been the Fisherman snapping veils off the walls and ceilings that previous night as he turned and tossed in bed.  Or it could had been this and that; or maybe the fact that, again, one of his legs got caught on another veil that morning as he was reaching up to grab something from the shelves above the bed... and boom! The entire hangings that served as curtains or entrance to our little niche came down... lol

I don’t know. I cannot explain in exact details how my brain works, or why sometimes it snaps the way it does, casting me under this dark cloud of self-destruction. Oh it would had been so easy to put everything back up into place right there and then; so easy to straighten things up and continued on enjoying our sweet gypsy space, but instead, all of a sudden, I found myself yanking off every pretty veil and every pretty drape and shawl off ceilings and wall therein.  Push-pins and thumbnails flying everywhere, until everything came to rest on the floor in a sad amalgamation of colors and textures.  

The Fisherman was speechless and felt so bad. We both felt so bad. I knew I was only hurting myself when doing what I was doing, and yet something inside me kept on pushing me onto causing me pain… the time I’d taken to build this little space of ours, the hard work, the joy, the coziness… I was only stripping off my heart of its joy, hurting myself and aiming at making my heart feel so sad by doing what I was doing. I am broken I know. And yet I still like to think that even so, God is nevertheless willing to use me and that his love is so absolute, that He can still love someone like me. I am so blessed to have in my life this gentle human being I called the Fisherman, for his continual love towards me, in spite of me.

After breakfast, we got on our car and when to explore our surroundings and check the little mountain city nearest our campground.  We found a quaint little church where we praised God on his sacred day, met some wonderful people and later joined them at their potluck.  Good healthy food, good people, hearts mended, the little joys restored.  

In the evening, the Fisherman made pizza for dinner... it turned out wonderful!

 

  

Our gypsy caravan is now looking as ordinary and as unpretentious as when it first came to us. Nothing fancy nothing gypsy nothing me... but I guess, as comfortable and undemanding as it should always had been.    For now!