Today’s post is brought to you by people who no longer live here. The first tulip was planted by former neighbors, but not when we were gardening side-by-side. Rather, they did one of their infamous “drive-by plantings” when we weren’t looking, and gifted us some miniature tulips.
The next tulip is a senior citizen and was planted by the former owners of our house. Next month, we’ll have lived here 20 years.
That red flower is a lesson in being beautifully tenacious.
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A garden is to be a world unto itself,
it had better make room
for the darker shades of feeling as well as the sunny ones.
~ William Kent
I worked in my garden today and experienced conflicting feelings. Why was I born into this life and society while others were born into regions of the world that are under constant assault? I’m no more exceptional than any of those people facing horrific circumstances. Why is that I can quietly work in my garden while others know only mayhem and violence?
At times, I felt guilty for my easy day outside under the blue sky.
However, I also felt satisfaction knowing my work would help living things thrive and that my efforts were keeping materials from the landfill. I reminded myself that I was creating beauty in the world and that beauty is a legitimate pursuit.
Last spring’s poppy blooms reminding me of the beauty yet to come.
Today, my garden made room for all the feelings.
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This afternoon I randomly thought about a man I once knew and then looked him up online. Well, I discovered that he’d died about 18 months ago. He used to be married to a friend of mine, but they divorced. The man had done some stuff that ended up being unforgivable. Zippy and I had spent quite a bit of time with both of them as a couple, and we liked the man. He was smart, funny, and always made us feel welcome when we visited. But after the bad stuff came to light, my loyalty was to my friend. The man reached out once, but I didn’t return the call.
I still believe I was right to stand by my friend, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m now wishing I’d tried to communicate with him at some point. The thing is, my friend and I aren’t really in touch anymore so this news makes it feel as if I’ve lost two friends.
But, as Billy Wilder said, “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.”
Because he loved these flowers.
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Bring on the blooms, yo.
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Ugly out there but
beauty is a rebel’s friend.
Must refill the well.
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Lavender has many medicinal properties. It’s also good for the soul, especially on a gray Sunday afternoon in January. Now if only this post was a scratch-and-sniff.
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I wanted to end the year with a photographic image I’d created on the last day of the year. So I grabbed my camera and in the fading daylight, captured this image of Loki:
Whoa, that’s kinda scary and weird. Slightly disconcerting. An image that overstays its welcome fairly quickly.
And then I captured this:
Ahh. Delicate beauty that evokes peace and calm. An image that grabs my attention without gimmicky extra eyes or blurred pink tongue.
And that about sums up the philosophy I want to carry into the coming year. Every day is going to have its bizarre-scary-weirdass-infuriating-heartbreaking-unjust moments, but there will always, always be moments of beauty. It’ll be up to me to notice them.
Here comes 2017.
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A bloom from my garden way back in July.
Take that, you gloomy sunshine-poor day!
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I think that the thing that we learned,
back in the day of the civil rights movement,
is that you do have to keep on keeping on.
~ Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Beauty blooming in the swamp at Kapok Park.
No matter what the outcome today,
gotta keep moving forward.
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If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
I put three hours into my garden today and it still looks like Flora Run Amok. Right about now I’d welcome a garden abduction.
Asters take up a lot of garden real estate and don’t bloom for a very long time, but when they do, they are lovely. (I can admit that. I’m not a monster.)
Now off to read a book from the library . . .
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When I get frustrated and angry it sometimes helps to focus on something else, preferably something pleasing and/or interesting to look at. Something with different colors and textures, sizes and shapes, and quality of light. 
Something that reminds me of my tiny role in the universe.
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Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful;
they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.
~Luther Burbank
You’re welcome.
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I’ve neglected my flower gardens this year and it’s very crowded out there, both front and back yards. The thistles and bindweed are giving the perennials a run for their money. I spent two hours out there today working on one small area in back, and it still looks like a garden gone mad.
Asters, day lilies, sedum, yarrow, and three shrubs that have run amok.
It’s a vicious cycle:
I’m overwhelmed by the mess
and avoid going out there
which means more stuff grows out of control
which I then avoid.
Some women fantasize having a cabana boy,
but I dream of Chance the gardener.
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I must dig deep to find the essence I’ve overlooked, hoping that as I revise I don’t trample the delicate structure already in place.
Gotta float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.
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“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
~ Arundhati Roy
Our blue flax has bloomed again. Rebirth is possible.
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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
~ Leonardo da Vinci
The last blooming coreopsis in my garden.
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I’m a perennial gardener which means that the flowers I’ve planted are supposed to come back every year. Some, like the coreopsis that once bloomed long and bright throughout my beds, suddenly stopped blooming. All of them, at the same time, disappeared from my garden. The same thing happened with the exuberant clumps of blanket flower that used to bloom next to my driveway and were the the envy of my neighborhood. Here today, gone tomorrow.
But those are exceptions. The vast majority of my flowers come back each year which is great because I’m lazy. And cheap. I don’t like having to plant year after year and I don’t want to pay a bunch of money for flowers that will only be around a few months.
For a number of years I did plant annuals in clay pots and place them around my patio and down the steps. It was a lot of work and cost a bunch of money, and I had to remember to water them all the time because it gets extremely hot out there in the late afternoon. So I just kinda allowed that aspect of my gardening to fade away and left the empty clay pots stacked in my basement.
However, one huge pot remains outside year-round.
This is a photo from yesterday and the petunias blooming there are the result of the last planting which was 2-3 years ago. Those petunias haven’t gotten the memo that they’re annuals. They keep coming back. They refuse to give up.
They’re tenacious,
they prevail,
and I feel an undeniable kinship with them.
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Last night we had a hail storm that stripped leaves from trees and petals from flowers. The yard and patio are a mess. I went out with my camera to assess the damage and was happy to find many busy bees.
Don’t think I’ve seen this type of bee before. Many of them were on the flowers in one bed this morning.
Meanwhile, in another bed, some bumblebees were hard at work. Note the pollen on back legs.
Didn’t even know this bee was in the frame until after the fact!
Earth is a flower and it’s pollinating.
~ Neil Young
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Woke up this morning feeling low,
nothing specific driving my blues.
More like a muffled blanket of sad
wrapped around me.
I forced myself out of bed for:
stretching
yoga
hooping.
Slightly better
but still wanted
to crawl back under the covers.
Grabbed some coffee and breakfast
along with my YA project notebook and pages.
Got to work.
Slightly better
but still blue around the edges.
Trying to use it to my advantage.
I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.
~ Duke Ellington
If you look real closely, you’ll see a Goldfinch.
These days I’m grateful for the happy sunflowers that bring the hungry goldfinches.
A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill
except for learning how to grow in rows.
~ Doug Larson
Dandelions and cockroaches, man.
The thing is, dandelions are actually quite lovely.
Cockroaches, not so much.
I think ‘The Color Purple’ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe. ~ Alice Walker
Yes, yes, and yes.
Today is gonna be hot.
Red Hot Poker hot.
These beauties grow next to my driveway after former neighbors committed one of their “drive by plantings.”
While I do admire the Red Hot Pokers’ fiery colors,
I find these Purple Coneflowers more soothing:
After taking those photos, I spent a fair amount of time
chasing bumblebees around the lavender with my camera.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get anything worth sharing.
The good news is that I always, always have bees in my yard
so I’ll have plenty of chances to capture one of those bumbly bees.
In the meanwhile, I’ll kick back to a little Sly & the Family Stone:
Stay cool, people.
Tracy Abell 