Lovely summer!

Gardening requires lots of water — most of it in the form of perspiration, I’d have to say.  But, if you live in these parts of the world where rain is infrequent and when it happens, it is only just a few drops and never ever the torrential rains of the south that I so love, then, it must also come in the form of some type of irrigation system… like our sprinklers!

  

And how I love sprinklers in the garden!  It is such a joy to sit in the porch and quietly watch how the garden gets saturated.  I can hear the garden singing—like a maiden in her shower, and the sounds are lovely sounds, and the voice is a lovely voice… 

...and it is like stepping into some sorts of a magical water world with its spray in my face and its mist erasing the outline of the garden and transforming it into some mysterious sorts of a place, foamy and smooth and green like glass over sunken roses and garden phlox. 

How suggestive the sounds of water upon roses and petals and green grasses!  They seem to fill the soul with the noblest of all music as the possibilities of life sweep the garden…

An especially serene dove has moved into the garden. Was the garden her birthplace perhaps?  Had she been born here and then decided she liked the place her parents had chosen as her place of origin, enough for her to make it her home?  I like to think that’s how it is.

Gardening is the art that uses flowers and plants as paint, and the soil and sky as canvas and my heart—my heart is the storehouse where each and every piece of art born in the garden is stored and kept so I can later retrieve them as my soul may need it.

I have a magical window too.  Each summer it gets covered in petals.  Roses want to climb in and evening light peeks in spreading little luminous dots on walls and floors inside.  Sometimes, I can even see the yellow face of the last sun reflected on the glass, and I see him smiling down at me; connoisseur of my secrets and deepest wants.

Looking to the outside from the inside is as magical too...

And all this magic is the product of summer. Beautiful summer.  Kind summer.  

I often hear people complain about the heat of summer; complaining about this and that about summer.  I would never understand this.  Even if it is uncomfortable sometimes, and I’d have to admit that camping in the summertime and living in a trailer is less than bearable, I still would have to prefer summer to winter…  any time, summer! My heart is a sunflower planted in the fields of summer.  How about you?  Do you love summer?

Stay, summer stay!

And it is geranium season too—all of them being in their glorious peak right now, with leaves and blooms so full and round and colorful….  

 

 

 

The enchanting dark yellow Black-eyed Susan are in bloom too.  Late last summer I had this idea of filling my summer garden with yellows.  Yellows, more soothing, beautiful happy yellows! Thus, I divided and planted more of these flowers in several parts of the garden.  My goal was to see more precious yellow among all the pinks of roses and greens of shrubbery... and what gift is has been seeing them flourished as they have.   

 



 

 

...my dream had flourished too, although not as much as I’d had liked it to; the reason being that I have run out of space in the garden, and shrubs and perennials have taken over and have spread out and grown so much, that I can only count with just a few free spaces for my precious yellows… 

Not that I haven’t felt the shift in the atmosphere already… yes, in the heat of August, the earth is already tilting on its axis… and my soul is already feeling it…

It had always happened to me—this discerning of things, of changes so subtle and inconspicuous to the common eye.  I remember when we used to lived here, many years before moving south, how I always felt the same sensation of anticipated changes… a shift almost unnoticeable, a change so elusive and yet there it was… the sun gifting us a new sense of light; green and low in the early morning, making the sky seem laden with rain that never happened...  

 

Knowing change is coming tends to spark a bit of nervous energy within me, making me feel like I need to prepare myself or brace for impact — even when it's as simple as allowing the seasons to turn.  Does this happens to you too?  Can you notice the changes, the sense that something is about to change?  Oh summer, stay a little longer!

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…