Rainless

We haven’t been graced by rain for so many months now, that the beautiful and evocative smell of it had been erased from my memory.  My soul craves rain, and it craves and dreams with the cold winds that comes with rain and those cloudy moments when mist and rainwater unite and transform the garden at length; changing it into a strange, dark beauty of sorts. 

I like it that when it rains, trees and things get diffused down, and everywhere you look reminds you of another place… a place you never been to in real life, and yet you know it by heart.  I just love it—love those cool days when the garden looks and feels cozy and dark, like a cave above the sea.

All day long this past Sunday I waiting for a downpour; for the sky turned into a promise, and all day long it remained gloomy and heavy with a horizon looming with rain… Yet, it was only but a tease, and by the end of the day that evening, everything switched back to the usual cloudless blue sky.  Dark clouds dissolved into nothing, giving way to scorching bright light again, and to a deep blue colored sky.  Thus, rain, or the false announcement of it, melted away with any remaining hope left in me. 

I was able to work on half on my garden this past Friday, and all those roses by our bedroom windows are gone. Down to the ground they are. The Mexican Primrose and tall Dahlias are out too. And it didn’t bother me—it didn’t bother me at all to see those beds now looking so desperately in need of life and so pathetically naked.

The roses were doing so bad, that it just made no sense to keep them as they were any longer. It is a lost case with the primrose, however, for these are most annoying little things, and they will continue on coming up and taking over.

I have learnt that one must be careful with how you employ your perennials, for although they are most trustful in the way they come back year after year, they too can be very rowdy and invasive and they can make your garden look a little disheveled, if you are striving for order.

Mom’s little garden was cleaned too.  Shasta Daisy, and garden phlox were pruned down to the ground, and so were the irises and whatever else I have growing there.  I’m thinking I want to have most of the Phlox completely removed.  For how annoying they are, with their tendency to crawl, instead of standing straight up. 

I was only able to worked part of the garden, and not as much as I should have, or wanted to… it is so much; so much is going on out there, so much craziness taking place in the garden this year with everything growing out of control and perennials everywhere quickly dwindling in beauty and bending over against each other.  Now that I work outside my home, I just don’t have the time the garden requires, and things have to be done by area and by moments. 

This is the entrance of the garden and my favorite part of it.

I like to keep things here neatly looking, and clean, but things have gone out of my hands and climbers are throwing long shoots everywhere, perennials are done and they need to be pruned down, or even be taken off for good.  I had it with them.  I had it with the garden phlox and I want to have them all pulled out, but these plants are extra stubborn and they will keep coming up, no matter what you’d do.

Houseplants

It’s been so hot around here lately... August, had finally forced me to bring my houseplants in again.  August is a fire-spiting monster here in our high desert and although I was hoping for a longer season outside, and a period of strengthening and growth for my plants, one by one they had to be hauled back inside... 

Thus far, they seem to be doing good, and I think they appreciate the cooler temperatures of the inside of the house; particularly the ones which naturally grow on the forest floor or underlying layer of vegetation where is cooler; such as my Maranta, or Prayer Plant, and my beautiful Monstera deliciosa. I can hardly wait for these two “Delicious Monsters” of a plant to grow to their gigantic sizes.

Unfortunately, our living room is the darkest room of our house.  It faces north, and right outside those windows sits our covered porch.  Its roof provide good shade to the area, but it also prevents sunshine from streaming in.  And because the curtains of grapevines covering the front of the porch get fuller and lusher during summer time, the living room gets even less light and it feels dark and cozy like a cave. 

Every time I think of those beautiful days of the south, and the amount of light our small living room at our little white cottage used to get, I then want to move to another house; or open up a hole on the roof, or bring the sun down and sit on it…

Somehow thought, that’s the area where I have relocated most of my largest houseplants to…  and I worry that they may not do good without the needed light.  Did you know that enough sun will also keep the stem of your plants from rotting? 

Light—like a plant, my own soul craves light.  Lots of it!  I always have.    

I’m hoping they’ll adapt where I have placed them, because if they don’t that means I’d have to move them back to that area by the kitchen where they used to be, all strung against the windows where they do get plenty of sunshine… 

I don’t want to do that again; however.  For I like the cleaner, clearer look of the space now with less plants in it, and I love the way my plants are now distributed throughout the house, instead of all being clumped up in one place… so I’ll wait a little longer and see how they adapt.

I have two humidifiers that I am constantly moving around so that all my plants can have the right levels of humidity they need and I also keep a growing light on all day, particularly under my Philodendron Xanadu. 

I love this plant.  It is old and big and I love how it looks sitting here in our living room.  Philodendron Xanadu tolerates low light conditions but the plant will be much less dens with long stems and smaller and sadder leaves. So if you want yours to really dance, place it an area with lots of bright natural light…  

Hopefully, she’ll like it here… but I know this corner is so dark.

I also love, love my Prayer Plant.  When it gets dark in the evening, the leaves of this plant start to move around and raise themselves up. Then they fold themselves shut, just like praying hands. It's nice to take a moment before bedtime then, just to pause and think about what you are grateful for today!

I also brought in one of my angels
And I'm loving how he looks sitting here so much!

My house looks like a little jungle...

and I just love it!

I decided to transplant my huge asparagus fern the other day for an easier handling in winter, and now I have three of them instead of one...

This one is growing up on the wall...

and this one down onto my kitchen plates...

Another fern... this one is growing on a pebble tray for extra humidity...

I love this little candle lamp I found this weekend at one of our local thrift stores...  love the soft light emanating from the little leaf-shape windows and I love how it looks sitting among my plants on this cute mosaic table by one of the window.

Instead of placing a candle inside, I inserted a string of Christmas lights and I love all the little lights now shining through!  It looks so romantic in the evening when the sun comes down and the house stays lighted up only by little fairy lights...

I also decided to add some more white to this area to enhance light.  So I found my old sit covers and this is how my living room is looking like now... I like it!

It’s been said that the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.  Well, I want my home to be that sanctuary where I can fly to the Universe from the very center of it!  So ‘thank you’ dear plants, for always making so happy!

Roses

The garden has been recuperating—slowly, but it has.  New shoots are sprouting from those roses which, back in July, I decided to prune aggressively.  And what a wonderful thing doing that proved to be… for I see rebirth and hope in these bushes, while the others—those I didn’t have the heart to prune so drastically, are still doing so poorly that I have now decided to cut them too… 

 

It is a scary thing to cut, or prune your roses so much, but there are times when one must do that; and this is one of those occasions.  

It is always such satisfaction knowing you made the right decision… the intuitive mind is a sacred gift, I think, and listening to what our heart is telling us, it is usually the right path to follow… 

Of course, we have to remember that sometimes that doesn’t work for everyone.  The Bible teaches us that the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?   And maybe there were occasions when, throwing caution to the wind, you let your emotions take the wheel, and all went well.  But it’s likely there are at least as many times when people’s decision delivered the opposite outcome. 

I believe; however, that if our hearts are attuned with the Divine, and we walk in the right path, then it is safe to listen to your gut instincts and follow what our heart is telling us.  

God speaks to the believer in real, amazing ways, and sometimes what we think is just ‘gut feelings’ it is actually His voice guiding… It is up to us to learn to trust those inner feelings and learn to listen to God’s voice… until those feelings become stronger and clearer… 

So, avoid going against your better judgment or getting talked into things that just don’t feel right—that’s my motto.

Windows

Funny how things work out sometimes… and thus, it happened that we decided to have every window of our two-story house professionally cleaned for the very first time ever.  And what an amazing thing it is to have clean windows, I tell ya—you can actually see everything outside again!  

It was like being outside from inside, or like being out in the garden from your very own kitchen... and it was as if someone had handed you down a new pair of eye glasses and… you could see again! 

 

Everything was so clear and everything outside looked so green and marvelous from inside. Then, it rained the following day. Yeah, it rained! Which means our squeaky-clean windows got rained down and wind blew bringing dust, and wind and rain and dust blurred everything out, and specially on the top floors, windows got pretty murky again. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, life is so unpredictable. Everything can be perfect one day... but for such short time! 

There are mice in the garden. Dead ones I have seen. Tiny, disgusting dead creatures that had been appearing from time to time in the garden. All dead thanks goodness; for I haven’t seen a live one. I don’t know where they dwell or from where they have been coming, but I just don’t like it. Coming across these dead things while working the soil gives me the creeps and I jump and scream and run away… and I just don’t like it. I need a cat, a cat or two like the feral cats roaming the premises at our little white cottage those years ago.

 

The other day, I found a cat roaming the gardens—yellow and white and I’m sure not wild, for although he didn’t come close when I called him, he did seem friendly, or civilized enough, and he strolled the gardens at his leisure smelling the flowers and taking his time to enjoy his life… oh how I loved seeing him here… 

And then... he jumped on the fence and was gone.  I put food for him outside that evening so he could return, but instead came the ants, and what do you think!  Believe it or not, they ate every morsel of food I left out… they were carnivore ants I guess, for I never knew ants could eat meat like that.

 Be good to yourself, enjoy your moments and thank God for everything He gifts you!