"I Want to Have a Relationship With You"

The physical of a garden is obvious.  House, meadow, hedge, porch with table/chair/vase, color, form, texture, flow, breeze, sound, temperature, scent,
implied actions. 
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This garden, below, becomes interestingly intentional if there's a cluster mansion just the other side of the hedge.  Indicative of clear choices made with a firm hand.  And life.
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Odd, the alchemy of hedge & meadow creating expansive space, physically & mentally.
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Pic, above, here.
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Nature takes the physical of a garden, metaphysical.  Psychologists proclaim a: 'Fertile Solitude = Basic Unit of a Full & Contented Life.'
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About solitude in Nature, "...one's inner voices become audible (and) in consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives."  Wendell Berry.
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Porch & garden, above, give layers of fertile solitude & the sound of our own inner voice, merely from a photograph.  This garden, above, is totally designed, though looks not designed in the least.  "Intelligence + Diligence + Wisdom  vs.  Letting It Be."  No one needs to be a garden expert to know what a letting-it-be attitude does to a landscape.
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"We die.  That may be the meaning of life.  But we do language.  That may be the measure of our lives."  Toni Morrison.  Gardens were a language long before man arrived.
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Deciding to have a Garden is 2nd order positive thinking.  "A real advantage is conferred on people who can do things that are 1st-order negative, 2nd-order positive.  Especially if these 1st order negatives are very visible costs with no immediate benefit in the short term and a non-linear benefit at some future time."  Shane Parrish. 
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A previous client moved from their home/garden 2 years ago.  Recently, near that home, I did the stupid thing, a drive-by.  Foot went to brake, and I just stared.  Their garden, on the edge of out-of-control, had bushes screaming, "Come, prune us, you'll have a nice couple of hours, and that problem you're most worried about, it will be solved when the pruning is done, your house will be framed in love again, and your attitude lifted, nurtured."  More precisely, I kept thinking, Don't you see, don't you hear? Your Garden is shouting in joy to you, "I want to have a relationship with you."
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Seriously, I saw their garden communicating with them, heard the exact words, "I want to have a relationship with you." 
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"...clinging to what you already know and do well is the path to an unlived life."  Parker Palmer.  Gardens are 2nd-order positive thinking.  How odd to finally 'hear' a quote from a Garden, "I want to have a relationship with you.", yet it was someone else's garden, speaking to them, not me.  I got the metaphor. 
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You may not hear the Garden speaking to you, 'I want to have a relationship with you'.  Be assured, it is. 
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Truth: Where Your Garden Design Begins

"......the facial feathers fanned into a sonic satellite dish dispersing sound to unlevel ears, one positioned higher than the other to help the owl locate its prey in three dimensions."  Maria Popova.
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Makes perfect sense.  Truth.

 
Pic, above, here. 
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Too often, truth is not our starting point, instead, we settle for facts.  Facts comfortably turned into information.  Worse, information elevated to wisdom.     
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I knew the garden, above, had a truth.  What?  I could not articulate it, nor create it.  Too busy using that American Horticulture degree, with its starting point a pure 180 from the truth, above.   Off to the historic gardens across Europe for 2 decades.  Truth was intuited in the first garden the first trip.  How could I not go back so often.  Now?  The imperative is to design gardens.

Garden Design is not a voodoo, let me make this up, oh I love plants x--y--z......, I must adhere to the HOA, these plants are on sale so they're perfect, let me do what my neighbors do and other such 'wisdom' without a base in truth.
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Each layer of Garden Design flows from a truth.  Great news, it means you've got this.  Better, you're working with Providence and centuries of the greatest Garden Design minds Earth has known. 
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In America, a Garden Design truth, above, most often not 'seen'.  How can you begin your Garden Design if you don't know the ears must be unlevel?   
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Truth, above, Garden Design begins inside your home, looking out.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

How to Start Your Garden Design: 101

Once you've toured historic gardens across Europe, twice minimum, a theme appears from the oldest, 2-4 centuries, gardens.  The oldest garden design theme is a template, process, equation, road map, truth, facts, information, trinity, whatever you wish to name it, and finally, what I name it, Wisdom.
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Pic, above, here.
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If we're lucky, we understand.  If luckier, we intuit Wisdom.
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You're looking at a garden design, above, using every element of the oldest gardens.  Can you name the trinity?
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If Earth's oldest gardens are a trinity, "Why not start a garden with what it ends with?"
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What are you looking at, above?  Trees, meadow, stone focal point.  Historic trinity of garden design, trees can be formal, above, or an existing wild wood.  Meadow can be pasture, or lastly, lawn, myriad shapes, or formal lines.
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Stone focal point, often a dried fountain, long ago unable to hold water, balustrades, terrace, plinth, folly, urn, statue, ruins of a stone house/castle.
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Trees are most often forest, a wild wood, bosque, nothing showy, yet with canopy & understory.
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A decade passed before understanding Wildwood next to Meadow.  Do you know the significance?  .
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Wildwood next to Meadow is maximum pollinator habitat, gift from Providence for survival.
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Recently, a new fact I discovered about trees, and Providence,

 "Other than God and people, the Bible mentions trees more than any other living thing."  Matthew Sleeth.
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Did you know that?  Matthew Sleeth, also linked to Charles Spurgeon, The Trees in God's Court. 
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Do you know who the garden, above, belongs to?  Have seen it several times thru the years, online, this time with provenance, Valentino's, Chateau de Widevill.
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Oddly, the trinity of Trees-Meadow-Stone Focal Point is greatly suited toward mid-century ranch homes & the flurry of split-level 70's-80's homes, calming industrialized architecture with agrarian/pastoral grace.  All homes & price points, not merely grand estates. 
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Why, exactly, start your garden design with what it will end with?  Less maintenance & expense, reduced HVAC with shade in summer, sun in winter, mental health benefits of beauty, physical health benefits Providence designed into our microbiomes without which we become ill or die.  Earth friendly, no fertilizers/chemicals toxic to groundwater, fungi, bacteria, agriculture, insects, wildlife, humans.  Friendly to even, yes, deer & armadillo, without noticeable damage. 
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Next layer, if you wish more in your garden, go for it, have fun.  No worries, if it fails, history proves it will, you'll still have a gorgeous garden Trees/Meadow/Stone Focal Point friendly to Nature, Earth and You.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T       

A (BETTER) New Way: Outdoor Container Plantings

Traditional container gardening met Deborah Silver, Dirt Simple.  In an act of agape love, traditional container gardens said, Bring it On !!  It was time.  Cliche, trite, uninspired one of many trinities describing traditional container gardens.
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With that agape love, and great skill, Deborah looked at traditional container gardens with a floral designers eye.  The entire silhouette from bottom of pot, sides of pot, rim of pot, plantings at pot rim, how the plantings taper upward away from the pot and the scale of width and height to pot, plinth, plantings, house, garden, sky.  Within the silhouette Deborah had a new vision for specific plantings, their texture, color, form, no holds barred.
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Once I saw Deborah's container plantings, it was immediate love.  With immediate passing of old ways.



At change of seasons I always head to Deborah Silver's blog, wanting to see her latest planting/pot arrangements.  Years of this, never disappointed.



In Deborah's latest post she refers to her tallest container planting layer as, Farmed Twigs.  Big day, learning a new gardening term.



Love a new style not needing a 'class'.  See it, do it.



Notice the plinths Deborah chooses for her pots.  Not merely getting the pots to the right height, they accentuate the silhouette.
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Deborah's pots aren't container gardening, but arrangements, changing the container gardening genre.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Agape love?  I bow down to Deborah's skill, and give great good thanks.  Seems so simple seeing her work, yet, no one else thought of it in several centuries.
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All pics from Deborah's website via Pinterest.

Do You Have Poyeema With Your Garden?

Last year, in Texas again, caretaking mom, days began early & ended late.  Mom was constant care, I was up 4:30-5am to get in my 'reading' before she awoke.  Those mornings were spent in the formal living room, unchanged since 1965, facing Galveston Bay, and a rising sun.  Coffee, journal, pen, reading on the phone. 


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One of those mornings, 7-15-18 in my journal, a word I knew existed, had to, hunted for, but never found, was finally discovered in a link within someone's comment on a political blog.     
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Gardening needs a word for its action steps, aka, working in the garden or garden chores.  Needed articles, but within reason, not-all-the-time.  Gardening is the art treated as a PSA equal to, use sunscreen, eat right, don't smoke.  Drive thru neighborhoods and how many good gardens do you see?  This doesn't include gardens solely well maintained, or merely matching HOA rules, but truly good gardens, beauty upon this Earth, and in our lives. 
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Decades looking, I found the word describing 'my' time in the garden.


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Poyeema.  It's Greek.  Do you know it?  I had never seen 'poyeema' written or heard it spoken.  Yet I have lived its meaning.  The link I followed, here. 
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Poyeema is mentioned twice in the bible. 
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"In Romans 1:18-20 the Apostle Paul declares that ungodly men are “without excuse” because they are surrounded by the evidences of the Creator’s “eternal power and Godhead.”

Our Authorized Version calls the creation, in this passage, “the things that are made,” but in the Greek it is called literally “the poyeema,” from which we get our word poem. The Apostle refers, of course, to the harmony of God’s creation, and is it not indeed amazing how billions of heavenly bodies can continually revolve in the vastness of space and never collide! And are not the flowers, the seasons, the sunsets all part of a harmonious creation, which God alone could have conceived and set to music?", here. 

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"Ephesians 2:10 – For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.

The word “workmanship” is the Greek word poyeema and means a thing made, a thing produced, with effort and design. In Ephesians 2:10, poyeema literally is in reference to us who are His masterpieces. We can literally define the word poyeema as poetry in motion for our lives are ordained by God", here. 

'Romans is a poem of creation, and Ephesians is a poem of redemption...'
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Years of gardening poyeema on my blog, in my books, on my TV show, at my lectures, in client gardens.  A poetry of workmanship.  Joy in the doing, grace in the results.
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How to garden?  The 'traditional' method of garden writing?  Not my niche.  But I do have a favorite 'traditional' how-to garden writing resource, she talks to your intellect, and life.
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Ca. 1998 I had the good fortune to hear Margaret Roach speak in Atlanta, she had just written a book, A Way to Garden.  Margaret was perfection.  Then something awful happened, but good too I suppose, she received a promotion at Martha Stewart.  Martha knew a good thing.  But it hemmed Margaret, in my opinion.  Finally, Margaret retired from Martha Stewart and began her blog, A Way to Garden.  Lucky us. 


All pics, above, from A Way to Garden, about Jenny Elliot of Tiny Hearts Farm.
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Humbling to realize Providence created all in grace, and poetry of workmanship, for us, yet went further, giving us our own poyeema, to take, or not.  The poetry and workmanship are there, awaiting, whether we believe, or not.
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Have you had this?  Poyeema, maybe never thought about it but knew there was something there, something without words, but every good feeling?
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So went my days last year, caretaking mom, epiphanies, laughter, hardwork, tears, joy, grace.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Notice the dry humor about finding poyeema?  Sure, let's look in the comments of a political blog, find a link, take the link, and there it is.....the big shiny sparkling word searched for decades..... 
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TV show?  That was awhile ago, hosting my own show on CBS and a lot of fun, and I approached it with a mission statement full of poyeema.
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Who's the lucky one reading this far already knowing poyeema?   

The Garden Goes in Myriad Ways: Into Your Lymphatic System & Amygdala

"Some people can read Tolstoy's 'War and Peace', and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story.  Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe."  Lex Luther from Superman.
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Pic, above, here.
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Terra cotta pots in a conservatory, above, travel directly to my amygdala and throughout my lymphatic system.  Most about gardens & Nature does. 

 
Pic, above, here.
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What does this mean for seeing pots inside, above/below?  Their redolence is layered in activities initiated upon my amygdala and lymphatic system.
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Merely from photos.
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You too?
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Yes?  We're born, not made this way.  Born with the awareness of Nature, more, knowing we are merely borrowed Nature ourselves. 


Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Oddly, I feel this way, seeing a single pot inside, in a photo, as much as being in a garden.  Yet, upon different layers, in addition to the layers when it's merely a single pot inside.
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Shakespeare's arrows pierce, and ring true, his method is 'suspension of disbelief, allowing truth to hit emotions.'  Epiphany of a Truth.  I don't know why all the above is true, I just know it's true. 
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I've stayed in my garden lane all my life.  Ejected from my lane, at times, courtesy of 'life', is sometimes like walking into the bar scene from Star Wars.
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Are you this kind of Garden Whisperer too?  Have you ever outed yourself this way?  Feel this way, but don't have the words?  Feel this way, yet have different words, same words but further words?
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Mos Eisley is a spaceport town in the fictional Star Wars universe.... The ' insalubrious' cantina is described as a dark, sinister bar full of "one-eyed creatures and thousand-eyed, creatures with scales, creatures with fur".  More from Wiki, here. 

How to Choose Simpler to Have More

"Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment."  Will Rogers.
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I could fill this garden spot, below, with friends at lunch, or a soiree in the evening, enjoying both.  Mostly, I would fill it up alone.  A spot to work with laptop, or paper, properly provisioned with journals at the ready, and book/s, a glass of water.  At weekend, gardening is added, various tools/baskets set atop the table, a few vases brought for clippings made into arrangements for the week.  The best clippings bushes, those arrangements sometimes last months.  Birds above, cats milling, water fountain on lowest pressure, scents wafting across the meadow.  Alone, at table, or in the garden, "...one's inner voices become audible (and) in consequence, one responds more clearly to other lives."  Wendell Berry.  And what lives, especially E.M. Forster, often Joseph Campbell, the Stoics, Beverly Nichols, Christopher Lloyd, Sir Roy Strong, Helen Dillon, etc...
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All for the privilege of making a choice.  At the front end, I named these choices 'selfish', blessedly, in epiphany, I know these choices are purest grace. 
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Putting the trinity of intelligence, diligence, wisdom against letting-it-be.  Letting-it-be upfront, day one, too small, worse, a cage.  'Fertile solitude....the basic unit of a full & contented life.'
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In the garden, a place to be at peace with "The part of us that's smart & funny but also lost & broken."  Bathing away life out of the garden, people not making choices for beauty, elegance, wisdom.  Not that I succeed at wisdom greatly or often, knowing the effort is more than half way there.  'It's not what happens to you, it's what you do when it does', a favorite cliche.  The blame game has no elegance, instead I ask questions that don't know there is blame.   
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You've read this far, you're a garden whisperer.
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Yet, are you new to this?  What?  This garden world, this garden life, this garden portal of your own?  With, 'conviction, commitment & conscience', plan your landscape, each will return greater in forms you've never known, but always knew.


Pic, above, here.
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So.  People who will never read this far, never achieve a garden/landscape beyond builder grade?  "Good guy, bad guy narratives might not possess any moral sophistication, but they do promote social stability...."  Catherine Nichols.
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Builder grade landscapes survived/thrived for decades.  Now their toxicity to soil, water, wildlife, insects has reached proportions affecting our own health, individually & collectively.  The garden, above, has stepped away from builder grade.  Its plinth is agrarian/pastoral, not industrialized.
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Martha Washington used these tables, above, merely planks atop saw horses.  Chairs?  Start resourcing at garage sales & thrift stores, field gathered.  Paint them all the same color.  A color from your exterior color trinity, of course.
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Wish I could say I chose gardening.  No, wasn't that smart.  Instead, one of the few born into it.  Literally.
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Pic, above, here.
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Hope you already own, An Island Garden, by Celia Thaxter.  She's one of those audible inner voices heard clearly, in my garden.
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

Tabernacle of the Full Moon in the Garden

Last October, unaware the moon, I came awake about 2am.  A rumble was coming toward me from the north east.  Had been awaiting it, didn't want it, yet knew this rumble solely mine to partake.  With Beloved sound asleep beside me I had to get out of bed, and house, before that rumble arrived in fullness, in me.  Something to be gotten thru, alone. 
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Barely, I made it out of the house.  No shoes, no robe, merely a well worn white cotton Eileen West gown.  Summer had stretched into October.
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Out the back door, and purely it came, wailing, from the ages, this is no theatrical or piece of literature. 
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Thru our century old pecan trees, a harvest moon.  Coating all, including me.
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What's the big deal?
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Pic, above, here.
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Mom was ill in Texas, many weeks spent caretaking her.  Home late September, Beloved went into hospital for 2 weeks.  Unknown causes, great pain, I was his sole advocate traipsing the medical maze, many nites sleeping at the hospital, getting home for clothes, mail, a bit of office, heading back to Beloved.
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Mom still upon her trajectory.  Toward what?  Dying, living another month, year?  Airline tickets already purchased, again, back to Texas.
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Beloved finally diagnosed, his last day in hospital.  Liver cancer, needs transplant.
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Pic, above, here.
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Days after Beloved's diagnosis I had not yet cried.  Too much to do for mom, too much to discover/arrange for Beloved.
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Pic, above, here.
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Finally, that rumble.  Amazing drama, receiving notice from the northeast, "Your tears are arriving."  Who knew by the light of the low hanging October moon, rescue & love, Providence, awaited in the garden?  More than the light of gloaming or chiaroscuro, both favorites, pure Mercury light fell onto meadow, house, trees, gravel, skin, gown.  The air was super charged with Mercury light.  Mercury light on tears that I had wiped away from my cheeks onto the backs of my hands.   

 
Pic, above, here.
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Mercury light, aside from beautiful, having a weight with all it touched, and the weight measured in joy, peace, Providence present.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Mom & Beloved beyond my control to cure, make whole, healthy.  Be present to what is given, take joy though I don't understand.  Trust God.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Our days are good, and with joy.   We pray, we love each other, we know life is real, good & bad.  Beloved's choice daily is life.  Awesome to watch, and partake with him.  Oddly, his health is good, and he's working.  The system for liver transplant is a template, he follows their orders.  It may be a year until transplant.  Until then, we live.  With joy, and thanks to Providence. 
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Don't understand hearing a rumble from the northeast, nor the necessity to run outside to wail, but I do know, it was written before I was born.       
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Many years ago at my friend Ruth's funeral service the preacher mentioned, "Ruth's body was a tabernacle....."  Interesting.  Didn't quite know what he meant.  Yet, after running to set my wailing free, to the Hunter's moon, I realized Mercury light of any full moon is a tabernacle. 

Branches in a Vase: Talent Not Required

Constance Spry trained dozens of floral designers.  She said it  mattered not their skills/talents, floral arranging is easily taught.  Perhaps, if she's the one directly teaching.  No Constance in my life, nor floral arranging skills, yet plenty of talent for making choices and following up with action steps.
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I dared tread into the realm of branches in a vase.  No talent, no budget.  Pure desire.
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Paying attention to types of vases, numbers of branches, scale to the room, and macro-silhouette.  Vases sourced from local thrift stores, branches from side of the road, and bushes needing a bit of pruning in my yard.   


Pic, above, here.
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Last year my life took a turn most lives take at some point.  My schedule was not my own.  Moms trump everything, and my mom was sick.  With the chaos of leaving my life, and helping mom in Texas, the imperative to cut branches and put into vases throughout my house became paramount.
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Pure Miss Katherine Scott, "I can live without the necessities, but I must have the luxuries."

 
 Pic, above, here.
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Blessedly my heart did not follow my head, and I did place branches in vases in several rooms at home.  Time for this, seriously?  Nonsense.  But the soul/muse spoke, and I was too emotional to be balanced.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Hunting and gathering the cuttings became a form of prayer.  Mom's illness was the first thing in my adult life pushing me into care giving another soul, and taking me away from my work.
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With great appreciation I learned helping mom is a joy of recompense, she never wanted children and lived a life she didn't want.  Unable to have my own children, her illness made me realize, mom was my ticket onto this incredible Earth.       

 
Pic, above, here.
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Choosing branches in vases, more than a few, why not go full-monty-wacko in how I spend what little time I have at home?  The joy in doing, too great to pass by.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Coming home from weeks away in Texas helping mom, several times last year, those branches in vases, awaiting me, I knew, were, oddly,  loving sentinels.  Those branches in vases became stewards of my heart, its loving and hurting were tended.
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What drama about a few branches in vases.  I was born twined with a garden, wasn't until my 20's realizing most people are not.
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Another thing I know.  You need zero skill to create a beautiful vase of stems.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara

Gardening for February: Choose Spring/Summer Colors

Oh YES, below.  Monochrome.  More, big pot.  Hopefully with drip irrigation.  Big pots are big on statement, with little effort.  Small pots?  Dinky is Stinky, worse, too much maintenance. 
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February's Gardening, choose color/s you want for spring/summer.  Seriously, with joy in the process.  What colors make you happy, where will you buy them when the time is right, do you need to start seeds now?  What's the rest of February Gardening?  Enjoying your lenten rose, camellias, daphne in bud, contorted willow catkins, tips of daffodil foliage showing etc.    Did a job in Detroit several years ago, oh my the sadness of not using camellias.  Roses are also pruned, if you live in zone 8. 


Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Pinks, above, are the light/dark pinks, below.  Excepting I'm adoring the added creme, below, with the tones of pink.  What flower is creme, without showy stamens, a pure creme to go with the pinks?
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Annual flowers, of any great beauty/interest for spring/summer, are mostly pre-sold to professionals, planting thousands of flats of annuals each spring, on contracts signed during fall/winter.  Too many years now, seeing a few stunning floral pots, wanting to do the same, yet nurseries are stuffed with the mundane at both retail/wholesale.  I am a professional, go into wholesale growers, see marvelous colors/plants, yet all pre-sold.  ALL.       

 
Pic, above, here.
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Another layer of color for your garden, below.
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Did you notice it's an incredible winter garden shot?  A garden beautiful in winter, will be beautiful all year. 

 
Pic, above, here.
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February is the best month to design a garden for.  May is a trollop in the garden, flowers with bees, trees with wind, bulbs with ants, shrubs with birds, groundcovers and possums, showy vanity, scented allures, touch-me velvet petals, come-play-on-me powdery stamens, land-on-my-throat funnels promising a tete-a-tete with cocktails, for starters.  Makes me wonder what's happening lower, in the soil, out of site.    Spring/summer are easy thinking with garden design, but not sustainable, fall/winter are the considered intellect designing a garden.
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Notice the humor?  Me, human.  Already on the hunt for spring/summer color.  Affected by the same spring concinnity as the insects, birds, etc.... 
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Proud of it.
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Pic, above, here.  Iris Apfel.
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Does color move you?  Color, wild-crazy-marvelous energy.   
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Pic, above, here.

  
Pic, above, here. 
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Gardening from your heart?  Courage.  Courage with intellect. 
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Go.  Go now.  Choose garden colors for spring/summer 2019.
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Garden & Be Well,   Tara

Gardening is Ritual Whether Begun As Sacred or Profane

In the garden is the ritual of life.
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How very satisfying, upon a winter's day, walking by a window, having put this garden, below, upon Earth.  A moment in perfect poetry answering why every galaxy, every star, every atom, every void was created, for this exact moment.
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In the ritual, love.  A manner to 'take joy', whether joy is obviously present, or not.  Joy is always present.  In a garden how can you not get life's 'Take Joy' memo?


Pic, above, here.
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"For Indigenous Australians, ritual sings the natural world into continued life, in a diffuse and enspirited relationship between the Dreamtime ‘past’ and the present. The Dreamtime surrounds the present, having created the landscape and order of the world, giving meaning and profundity to life and reflecting cosmic order, while rituals of the ‘ordinary’ present, in turn, sustain the ‘extraordinary’ Dreamtime order."
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"In the dominant culture, ritual is often a stale, wilted word, as dusty and songless as Christmas decorations glimpsed in midsummer. Many people profess no clear religion and lack formal rites, and yet, even in ritual-poverty, a yearning persists to rekindle it from a stub of a candle, a petal and a word. There is a perceptible need for that numinous Other Place to which ritual gives passport – where no one is exiled and none a foreigner, and there is a defiant fecundity in contemporary ways of answering that need to give wishes wings."
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" The poiesisor making of beauty, not the possessing of it, is the kind associated with art or poetry.  Meanwhile, the effect of making beauty, a Balinese taxi driver told me, is that ‘your mind is surprised and happy. Beauty makes you feel pure, and purity is necessary for prayer.’ " 
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"In the canang saris, flowers are the symbol of beauty, and flowers attend rituals all over the world: flowers for birth and death, the doorways of life, flowers for social doorways, for guests and hosts, flowers to honour and to thank with the lightest touch – a petal-weight of unimpeachable beauty. You don’t have to believe in god to believe in the radiant divinity of flowers and their beneficent efficacy."
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" Flowering plants are quite literally a source of life; according to the botanist Walter Judd at the University of Florida: ‘If it weren’t for flowering plants, we humans wouldn’t be here.’ They are necessary, but they also illustrate the margins of grace beyond necessity – a rhapsody of colour where life sings: such is the veridical beauty of flowers. In terms of evolutionary aesthetics, the beauty of flowers is primal – they have sung a soft serenade for 130 million years, and their beauty was there before we humans were there to see it. And perhaps after."
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"The sweet paradox of small daily rituals is that the ordinary is intensified into the sacred through the numinousness of the absolutely commonplace, an illustration of immanent divinity, demonstrating that all it takes to find cascades of enchantment is a tender attention in which the natural living world is blessed by the psyche, and the psyche by the natural world. Ritual sculpts, shapes and polishes the spirit in a fineness of mind, the hearth of the heart tended and made more tender by the delicate touch of something little more than a thank you. So the slightest of ritual magic, turning on a breath, might open doorways on to a future; and life might be protected by a petal and the holiness of prayers."  All quotes, above, by   Jay Griffiths , award-winning author and contributor to The Guardian and Orion magazine.  She lives in Wales.  
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In my garden, living with my garden around the house, and in my heart, became, along the way, love, grace, joy, and ritual for surviving on this Earth.
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Take Joy, indeed.  
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Full article with the quotes, above, Aeon.

A Pair of Landscapes: Exactly Alike Yet Opposites

Within constraints of sacred vs. profane the world takes away so much of our life, why give it more?  Merely targeting industrialized residential landscapes ca. 1945 to present, in USA. 
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This pair of landscapes, below, are opposites in style, yet both have style centuries older than industrialized landscapes.  What style is that?  Agrarian/pastoral.  More, both landscapes focus on the house and its inhabitants/guests, as proscenium and star.  A sweet pairing, life is the focus, not life maintaining the landscape. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Top pic appears modern, bottom pic appears historic.  More, their style, appropriated to other sites, becomes new again, unique.
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Ambition and aspiration are both of great value.  Yet how they are mixed, and their changing percentages given across our life, even a day, show in our material lives.  Ambition and aspiration should be in the landscape, with aspiration weighted heaviest, they've made the best landscapes for centuries across continents and cultures. 
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Industrialized landscapes stop at mere ambition.  Agrarian/pastoral landscapes, even with a bit of industrialization tossed in, have ambition, but their aspirations are greater. 
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What does this mean?  'Ambition is what we want to achieve and aspiration is who we want to become.' 
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Pic, above, here.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Seeing agrarian/pastoral landscapes as a child, there were a few, compared to thousands of industrialized, I saw generosity of spirit, welcoming arms, a rich conversation, fun, intelligence, secrets, home, love.


Pic, above, here.
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Hedges, trees, & a meadow/gravel terrace is the trinity for agrarian/pastoral, and the new modern industrialized landscape.  Be like Iris, know how you can get away with anything.       

 
Pic, above, here.
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Grief, when it comes, I take into the garden.  At least I know what the garden will do.  A new grief?  Never know what it will do.
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Pic, above, here.
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Your landscape should tell me who you are from the curb.  If I see a photo of your patio, it must be so fabulous I have to go inside your home, and wander the garden.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Gardens have always been places of light and love, to me, from earliest childhood, and respite from the darkness & hate that comes in measure to all.

 
Pic, above, here.
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Perhaps it was not being able to have children, I never had to give her, above, up.  Ever.  No worries if you've never gardened this passionately, there is no age limit to start. 
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Get dirty?  When I garden there are bruises, blood, time ceases yet expands, hunger doesn't exist, epiphanies arrive, grief has a place to harbor for awhile, forgiveness is given but feels like a bestowal.....
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT