In the August garden

It is the second season of the roses, it is a rebloom of glories and pinks and lavenders again... and the garden has dressed itself in sweet petals once again; I supposed, for the last time of the year, although I like to think that I should see another burst at the end of September, before autumn starts to settle in…

I am delighted with what I am seeing, collecting, feeling... happy to live surrounded by roses in my little Paradise. There is nothing more special or magical at the end of a hot summer's day than strolling this small plot of land and feel rooted right there and then.  You can smell the heat coming up from the earth to meet the cooler evening air; magic waft from tree to tree and from rose bush to rose bush... what can I say?  It's hard to believe I'm here, that all I see is mine... to take care of, to plant to sow to enjoy and love...  I am thankful so thankful!

 

...and birds, ah birds!  They seem to be enjoying this wonderful little world where I live, as much as I do, and as  passionately. 

Babies are being born almost every day and you can find their mommas busy searching everywhere for wiggly worms to feed their wee ones...

Every day around 6:00 in the afternoon the large mourning doves couple comes down to drink from the birdbath, they resemble angels gracefully floating down in the music of their wings.  I sit on the rattan chair by the grapevine, and my soul, too, flies away in the beauty surrounding me… from my left then comes the frantic tweets of baby robins being feed by their momma in an interval of 10 to 15 minutes… what a ruckus they make, and how very hungry must they be, and what a lesson of patience, and genuine love from the unrelenting mother…

I love summer, I love to feel the warmth, or the heat of days spent in the garden… the taste of sweet fruits, to watch the butterflies flow, hear the squirrels chatter and the hummingbirds swoon, till evening comes with the summer moon.  So please, summer, stay a while longer. Continue on bringing your long, lazy days. I'll cherish each blue sky and enjoy and love all the roses you can gift…

The old gypsies set out again this past weekend to explore the world.  Their souls yearned for the luxury of the mountains and the pleasantness of rivers, but there was no escape from the heat; no solace from the sun whatsoever…

Up, up into those glorious mountains they went; to that beautiful place, parapet by a placid lake… but when they got there, nothing felt right… the heat was unbearable and the lake seem made out of fire and glass.

The place was less crowded than usual, and there wasn’t a single soul around.  The rows of glorious lilac trees barricading the campsite were devoid of blooms this time and the shady places were scarce and unprotected from the intense glare.  The lake, too, was unusually quiet and undisturbed by boats or swimmers… 
  

The intense sun of summer had charred grasses and withered low bushes; birds were hardly seen either and all around you, you could feel the air, dried and unhappy, exhaling into your face...

The old gypsies ate their lunch in silence, feeling heavy and groggy. Not a single soul was seen anywhere, as if the place was devoid of people, and it felt deserted and like a place of the dead. They went to hide inside their gypsy trailer, thankful that they could count on electricity to turn on the air-conditioning and saved from dying of a heat stroke… 

Evening brought the magic back to the land and the last sun spread out a magical cloak upon the waters, filling it with diminutive sparkling stars that moved and shined and dance in sheer glee… the earth filled with a new freshness and mellower temperatures, breathed magic upon the land and upon the heart of the old gypsies. How beautiful, how very beautiful everything looked and felt then…

The doors of the gypsy trailer were flung open and the gypsy girl swept up the floors and cleaned up the place, while her Fisherman went down to the lake to talk to his fishes… 

  

This is why the camp, this is why they go out heat or cold… to find themselves in finding Nature, and to be one in soul, with this old world, and with each other…

Summer days

Oh, summer how I love thee!  

 

I’m living my days in the garden these days.  Hours and hours spent watching at how Nature master its own way on becoming prosper and a beautiful place for humans to live in.

And how the garden has fully-fledged and swollen itself in this deed green lushness and summer glories and squawks and croaks and bird-talk!

I grow roses for many reasons... to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them embellishing my world when I look out my window!     

  

Birds are everywhere, and the diminutive Hanna hummingbird have found the sugary water I make for them.  I love to watch them—two, three of them flying around my head without the slightest fear, as if I were yet another garden statue.  How lovely, how very lovely these tiny creatures are...

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.  

  

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace. 

Just talking

I can hardly believe that an entire year had already passed by since our house in the roses got repainted, early last summer. 

 

Time is an amazing creature, isn’t it?   Nobody owns it, no body can hold time.  Time is a mystical wild horse… it passed by the pathways and trails of our lives in swiftly manners, and if we aren’t paying enough attention, it will go by and we’ll never see it again… we must retain it, we must pay attention to time and hold it very dearly and very tight onto our hearts, even if it is only for a moment…

Live, laugh and love with all your heart… do everything with gusto, because perhaps you won’t have another change… there’s not a day that passes that I won’t think of my dear mother… and how I wish I could go to that clock which is life and rewind it. Rewind it to those days when she used to laugh out loud and to those days when we would hold hands and walk to wherever we were going talking and laughing and owning our moments together…

 

Early at the beginning of this month, as I was going out for my daily morning walk throughout our neighborhood, I found a most disturbing thing in my garden… someone had pushed down the beautiful and dense Virginia creeper that for years and years had mantled our fence and beautified the path or corridor that serves as the garden entrance.  

Everything was on the floor, big beautiful branches laid broken and distorted on the floor, and leaves were scattered everywhere. Someone had taken the trouble to pushed the entire vine off the fence and had trashed it onto our side of the fence… I could hardly believe what I was seeing, and how sad!  I knew it had to be an unconsidered someone, but who? 

The previous night I had heard our neighbor shouting at someone as he was pulling in his trailer onto the narrow alley separated by our mutual fence.  Apparently, the vine must had bothered him in some unusual way, or maybe he was just drunk... and thus went on destroying it…

I felt very distressed about it, but decided to move on and continue with my daily routine.  I would worry about the vine when I came back.  To top it all off, I was feeling rotten that morning.  One of my legs and hip was causing me problems and I could hardly walked…  but I kept on walking or limping, immersed in my frustrations…

A woman was coming towards me from the other side of the road, I saw her looking straight at me from the distance, but I kept to myself, immersed as I was on my morning’s miseries.  Then, as she approached, I heard her offering a most questionable “good morning!”—you know the kind, like forcing you, like when somebody say “thank you” but they don’t really mean it and their only intention is to inflict the nasty disruptive feeling of “violation of personal integrity” on you.  No, it wasn’t a good morning.  It wasn’t a good time to smile or even to raise up my eyes from the road, and yet there she was forcing me; forcing me to smile and to have to say something I didn’t feel. 

The feeling was exactly the same in texture and flavor as the feeling that comes with having been raped, but is a lot less intense. I always greet people with whom I meet on my walks, or I would say something and smile, but if they don’t respond, or if I notice they are not willing to reciprocate, I won’t force.  It is wrong to force people, even wronger to force them into gratifying or pleasing you, and wronger still, to dictate exactly how you want them to gratify you.

 

Be happy, be kind. Don’t force people to please you by making them do what you consider is right, or it should be done… Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.  This is my motto, whenever I meet people… anyone… Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.