Spring

Spring is finally creating a new world in the garden—scents, colors, textures; all are appearing; gratifying my life again with enchantment and dreams.

It’s been a long cold spring, if we can call it ‘spring’, for temperatures have been in the 40’s  every morning and every evening, feeling more like a mild winter around here than an actual spring.  And yet, the garden knows its seasons, and although slow in waking up, it has started to awaken.

The only roses I have thus far is the early and sickly-sweet Dr. Huey—always the first ones to appear, always the first ones succumb under the power of mildew.  

Dr. Jekyll would have been a better name for this rose that at one point was something else.  But how beautiful they are!  With their arching long branches with a heavy load of dark red blooms. 

These would not bloom again.  This is it for another year!  But I love the versatility of their green canes, with which I can cover walls and bare spaces.

Then, by the big fountain in the middle of the garden, another little area had started to surface.  For I have removed that other ‘good for nothing’ Dr. Huey rose that’s been there for years, giving me nothing but headaches.

Thus far I haven’t planted anything in its place, because I like the look of the wispy ferns that are growing everywhere and filing emptied spaces with their gracious fairy fronds. 

I didn’t know this ferns can grow to such heights, but they do, and what a surprise they’ve been to me this year, with their tall beauty embellishing my garden.  It took them a few years to reach this height, but I now want them everywhere, and have been transplanting them everywhere too; particularly around mom’s garden and the pebble path on the entrance of the garden.

One of the best thing about this fern is the easy way they have for multiplying.  They grow themselves in places you least expected it and are easy to transplant.

Spring 2021

Days fly away, hours accumulate in the thin air of the horizon as seasons come and seasons go.  And what about us where do we go to gather dreams and hopes and pray for the peace of this world?  It seems years since I stepped here last, but wintery weather has started to move away, petals are painting the grounds in pinks and whites everywhere and the lilac tree has giving us its jewels with which to perfume our nests.

Thus, I am out again.  Out in the garden working for hours as much as I can.  I have painted old pots and altered the topography of the garden by removing old plants and bringing new ones in.

This year, I decided to remove one of the Quaking Aspen I had planted along the northern fence, in the hope to cover the two-story house on the other side as quickly as possible.  The Quaking Aspen grow very quickly, I love their cream to white-colored trunks, and whimsical ‘eyes’, as I call them, which are actually the dark markings where side branches used to be. 

They provide a wonderful finishing touch to a suburban yard, and quiver delightfully in the breeze. Their leaves are charming — deep green in the summer months and brilliant gold in fall. Unfortunately, despite their lovely fall foliage color and other attributes, quaking aspens can be significantly problematic.  They are invasive. Clusters of clones will quickly grow and take over your garden.  You will have to cut new shots everywhere all the time, and they are not too reliable either, as for some unexplainable reasons, part of it, if not the entire tree can die in just a few years. 

Our neighbor on the other side, had to cut theirs down, and part of one of mine needed to be cut off too.  So I didn’t want to take the change with this one and therefore removed it roots and all, the other day.

I painted pots and painted birdbaths and whimsical things around the garden... and we gave our back porch a new coat too...

Right outside our kitchen area, three old roses that were doing very poorly were finally taken out too.  I had waited too long and had been too sentimental towards them, until now.  To replace them I have planted three new red double-Knockouts with lots of red cluster that last forever.  I will have to wait until next spring to see the growth, but I can wait.

In every season, in every time, there is some magic unfolding in the garden, but nothing like on these spring days… to walk in it and dream, to work and received to sow and to collect and sense and taste and hear… what more could I ask? A few flowers at my feet and above my dreams, the stars.

 

Covid-19

 March 15

So many ‘years’—so it seems, have transpired since I last wrote.  Such traumatic moments we have lived, too.   

Yes, both my Fisherman and I got infected with the novel coronavirus a month ago today.  Two weeks of uncertainties, days and days of not feeling well and not knowing exactly what was to be expected next, or what was going to happen to us or what we were supposed to experienced; days and days thinking of our friends and remembering those who didn’t make it, it was indeed a traumatic experience.

I spent many hours on my knees seeking help from “above”; at times feeling I was going to die; feeling unworthy at times for God to hear me, or feeling I wasn’t good enough or perhaps not holly enough for having been infected.  Guilt, fear, contrition filled my soul.  One morning when my faith was at its low and I was feeling very discouraged, I asked the Lord to speak to me and show me what I was to expect.  I was ready.  I then opened my Bible, and God said to me in a gentle, clear voice:  “Blessed be the Lord, who has not given us as prey to their teeth. We have escaped like a bird from the snare of the fowler; the net is torn, and we have slipped away” (Psalm 124:7).

I knew right there and then that we were going to be fine.  We had escaped, even if we were still feeling awful!  And we did.

March 12

I have started working in the garden again—spring cleaning this place I have so abandoned for so many months is like meeting with a good friend I hadn’t seen in years again.  I’ve been discarding winter spoils and cleaning the garden’s floors of debris accumulated during the cold season.  It hasn’t been easy, this job… for this body has aged in the chronometer of an atomic clock since Covid… but it felt deliciously good, and it felt delightful like a miracle escaping through my fingers as I worked the soil and crawled under the bushes, pulling weeds and raking dead leaves with bare hands. 

I’m alive!  I made it through, and now more than ever I want this old body and feeble mind to be the sanctuary where the Holy of Holiest lives and the place where his Holy Spirit dwells.  I am so humbled and thankful for the way in which God saw us through.  I want to do so many things, change the color of my hair, cut it, get new furniture, do some improvement in the house, plant new trees, get rid of some others…

I cleaned my closet this past weekend too.  A lot of the outfits, shoes and bags I hadn’t worn in the past year were giving away.  I didn’t even have to think about it twice, for I have been ‘reborn’ and what’s the ephemeral has ever to do with real joy?  the joy that cannot be touch, but feel, the joy that gives health to your bones?

It was so freeing being able to finally part from those things that at one point in my life were not only important, but also loved and treasured.  I have been doing the same with a lot of other things in my life.  We carry so many baggage and unnecessary things; material and not material.  Negative feelings, grudges, resentment, hatreds—they weight us down and make us sick.  We need to forgive and forget, and we need to always remember that our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. 

 See you soon, my friends!

 

Hello Hola!

Just entering the thresholds of this old house—nestled in sleepy roses, makes me feel nostalgic and wistful for gone by eras. And I have to wonder if, perhaps, I am another person; and a soul I no longer recognize. 

And where has time gone to? Where the years have gone to hide... in what drawer of time and in what part of the horizon they rest? For it seems years, if not centuries, since I came here last... years since those days when life was young, and the conspiracy of happy days filled my very soul with wonder and dreams.... and why had my heart stopped dreaming? Why had my soul stopped seeing the dawn before the rest of the world?

I blame age, and I blame these long winters and those long hours at work and I blame this world and the changes that had come to rattled our peace.  Perhaps, I am getting old, or I am older, perhaps time does that to you—it makes you lose some of your boldness and some of the freedom running through your veins, to be you, be the child that you were in the spirit, be naïve and engage life with the eyes of innocence. 

Time has a way of freezing up our hearts sometimes. Whatever it is, I have changed. My heart is a hermit, my body aches, and It’s been snowing for days... snow, white and thick and unforgiving purifies my world outside and this heart feels as cold as snow—nieve.

The only thing that seems to give me some comfort are my plants and I have converted this unattractive, small room into a conservatory of sorts.... always evolving, always the place to come to daydream and read and pray... 

The room is located to the front of the house, outlooking at the street and neighboring houses. It is not really what my heart envisions or dream of, a real conservatory, sunlight beaming through the enormous glass roof where I can have all my tropical plants... 

Just to think about this makes my heart beats wildly, my thoughts to linger in some gigantic tropical plants, while I sit under an arbor covered with bougainvillea bursting with magenta blossom, just like the one, once framing the entrance to my mother’s small garden.

For nor now, this makes me happy. We all need a room that makes us happy. I don’t have a Florida room with big windows filled with sunshine year around, my floors are not even appropriate for a real plant room... they are carpeted, which means they get soil and plant debris and little pieces of wood and moss and such beauty, but it is the room for peaceful moments and faith filled hours where the heart gets recharged and hope and faith work together to really experience God.

Thank you for your friendship and kindred spirit and for still coming by... I wish you all the best. I wish you beautiful quiet days and a heart filled with faith and trust in our Heavenly Father. I truly believe we are living in perilous times. There are so many signs that tell us we are living in the last days of earth's history. Let us get ready my friends!