Minimalist Guide to Bringing a Meadow Inside: Consecrating Effort

 BIE, before-internet-era, this, below, is how I put foliage/flowers on the table.  Perfectly suited to my skills, none.

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A family of good cooks, I'm not, my job (self created) was washing as the cooks (wasband/his parents) cooked, setting the table, and washing again when the meal was done.  A bargain.

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Decades pass, still no skills arranging flowers/greenery, yet a confidence in adoring bringing a meadow, or parts of a meadow inside. 

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Seems boring, but stay with this little story.  It is about Garden Design.

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"In the course of creative endeavors, artists & scientists join fragments of knowledge into a new unity of understanding." Vera John Steiner, Psycholinguist. 

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More than merely adoring meadow arrangements inside, I adore meadows outside.  Tara Turf, a mix of what's local, native, historic, friendly to soil, fauna, us, pollinators.

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Designing landscapes with Tara Turf, I attach their historic framework, local canopy/understory trees/shrubs.  Native, friendly to soil, fauna, us, pollinators.

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These are the gardens discovered across Europe, I studied historic gardens there for decades. 

 

 Pictures, here.

Now, living in a ca. 1900 home with Tara Turf, I've learned more.  Cutting greenery for the house, excess foliage & clipped ends of stems, I drop at the base of shrubs/hedges.  Zero clean up or taken to a compost pile.  All dropped where it grew.  Feeding the soil.     

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Feed the soil, feed the worms, feed the birds, and you've just started a potent link in the chain of pollinators.  It began wanting to put meadow plants on the table with a good meal.  

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"Living the questions embracing uncertainty allowing for intuition." Rainer Maria Rilke, 1875-1926.

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Outer weeds, in vase, above, we have along our rural roads.  The 'flower' I can't quite make out.  I do know, I'm on the hunt for a tall heavy vase, and roadside meadow weeds its first companions.

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"...only the ego can blind an artist to the recognition that all creative work begins with imitation before fermenting into originality under the dual forces of time and consecrating effort."  M. Papova. 

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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara

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Timeline learning the facts, above, decades.  If you're more stubborn than me, I want to know you !

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Update: Beloved's 3rd liver cancer treatment was done and it's another 2 weeks until results can be taken, previous results, tumors gone..  Amazingly, he got a call, his liver transplant may be done before  end of the year.  

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Hmm.  We've walked this road before.  So.  We're living in preparation, yet fully living life.  The bigger scare, not fully living life.  Beloved had quite a moment yesterday.  He told me how I can run his team of men while he heals from transplant.  Told him, My job is to keep you fed, meds on time, clean sheets/clothes/sponge bath, handling administrative tasks, not listening to any complaints.....

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Lifting you up in prayer, this global pandemic

Indigo Girls: You Can't See It, You Can't Hear It, We All Need It

 Garden Design is a series of negotiations.  Amazingly you think you're the negotiator.

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More than the sound of wind thru foliage is a Garden's thrum.

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"It is difficult to get the news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."  William Carlos Williams.  Best line about Garden Design, and pandemic, yet found.

 

   

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You'll discover the vital work of gardening; its planning, execution, caretaking, become the deepest, richest and strongest layer of life.  In and out of the garden.

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Gardens have always excelled in, "revealing people in all their laughable delusions."  Dan Chaon.  Several years into seriously creating a beautiful garden, and laughably failing, I  made changes to my education, self, and expectations.   

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"The act of translation is its own kind of meta; translation is a complex art......"  Sarah Neilson. Garden Design is the highest form of translation.

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Wisteria curtains, above, wish you could see them from inside.  Better, plant Wisteria 'Amethyst Falls' at your window.  Easier than Wisteria, plant Oakleaf Hydrangea and espalier.  Oh my the winter views outside through Oakleaf Hydrangea curtains.

  

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My subversiveness trinity: gardening, reading a poem, saying a prayer.  What is your subversiveness trinity?  You know, the one from your soul, not your elevator speech.

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Do you think he hears the rope, above, while swinging?  Probably.  In decades, he'll still hear this rope swinging.  Do you hear his rope?  I do.  And I can smell the Tara Turf under his feet as he walks away.

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Garden Design is thousands of years old.  Everyone behind us, is with us, as we are with this child, though he lives decades past us.  How do I know?  I hear it in my Garden, in Nature.  You know this, you hear it too, or you wouldn't have read this far.

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Gardening, "It's not about proving anything.  It's about sharing something." Yo-Yo Ma.

 

Pics, above, Tatler, here. 

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Love the wonk of the gate, above.  My gates all have wonk !

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Walk the path, above.  Do you hear it?  Walk outside, beyond the gate, do you hear your footfall?

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In the garden, alone, a barrier is crossed.  No longer alone, I'm not at all, it's only garden.  Garden & silence bring power.

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Emily Saliers, Indigo Girls, about going to a monastery, "It gave me an appreciation for the power of quiet in spiritual practice, which I think a lot of young folks ---or maybe I'll just speak for myself --- didn't really understand, well, what's the big idea about being a monk and going and being quiet?  What does that do for the world?  And it gave me a very keen understanding of exactly what it does for the world and for spiritual communities."

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"....an evolution of recognizing how sacred what is deemed secular is."  E. Saliers.

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"I didn't have an appreciation for simpler things that were proffered as much as I do now." E. Saliers.  

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Of course Gardens are not silent, yet it's their silence saving your life with Nature's oldest poetry.

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"....theologians --- they thoughtfully organized liturgy.  They put thought into constructing it so people might get the most out of it.   .....thought, and organization and structure....."  E. Saliers  Amusing, she's speaking of religion and its template is Garden Design.  

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It's the Garden's silence, you're wanting, as much as its meadow, flowers, trees, etc. 

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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Oddest Garden Tool: Clothes to Better Gardening

 Working professional propagation for many years, we all wore aprons.  Couldn't work without one.  More than clothing, the apron is a tool.

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Of course I wear an apron working in my garden at home.  They teach that in college?  Pure, OJT. 

 

   

Pic, above/below, here.

 Need an apron/dress, below.  Most often gardening, I plop on ground, and butt scoot.

  

 Incredible, below.  Master of color combination, interesting.  Fall gardening, yet can head out to jobsite, stop at grocery store, back into garden.

   

Pic, above, here.

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"Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, & times shall be good.  We are the times: such as we are, such are the times."  St. Augustine, AD 354 - 430, Sermons to the people, 80:8.   Her clothes, above, delightful, I'm on the hunt.  Knowing they came from the, Poverty Cycle.  

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Gardening has a sliver, if we remain fortunate, of every sacred Poverty Cycle education. 

A little bit cooler in fall, below, tweed.  All my best tweed is from thrift stores.  Am 'over' rubber boots, they crack, wear a couple years cracked & duct taped.  No more, done.  Cowboy boots, leather/with rigid rubber soles. Justin, Tractor Supply.  

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Use my dad's inherited Stetson, no more broad brim hats, below.  Stetson gives shade AND broader range of view.  Plants are my doggies.  No one can say, She's all hat and no cattle.  For good measure, I wear dad's original Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses he bought in late 50's when he was an Air Force Test Pilot.  

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Think my Garden knows when I walk outside?

 

   

Pic, above//below, here.

 

 Soon, these, below, are the gardening clothes for a month.  Scarf, exactly what's needed when under large shade trees, ticks, or going into shed for tools, spiders.

  

Pic, above, here. 

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"The habits of the home in one generation become the morals of society in the next." 

My parents grew up suburban/agrarian.  They raised a family, suburban/subdivision, no agrarian.  Their gardening was maintaining the lawn with mowing, chemicals, fertilizers,  & shrubs the same.  No different than most of their era.  The era decimating bird populations, insect populations, poisoning soil, water supply and killing microbiomes.

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Quote, above, seems extreme at first reading.  Across the decades of my own life, not my parents, it is an honest quote.  Rachel Carson wrote, Silent Spring, two years after I was born.  We're using more chemicals, not less.  Carson's advice to stop using chemicals in the landscape fell on my heart as obvious, growing up.   

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Merely figuring out the need for proper gardening clothes, was through experience gained on my own.  

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Aside from inherited pieces mentioned, over 90% of my gardening clothes are thrift store.  Better quality than new retail.  No worries about rips, stains, holes at thrift store pricing.

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What's in all my pockets?  Cell phone, Felco pruners, brown twine, misc.

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"...things that they value, or their traditions, or their aesthetic ideals, or their ways of constructing happiness, or the things that they recognize as being important and worth noting."  Tim Lomas

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At the front end of getting a Horticulture degree, studying historic gardens across Europe for decades, and supporting myself designing gardens it's amazing to realize, now, more of the terrain, not merely the map of my life, "I'm going out as a scout, hunting for resources and ideas that might be liberating or sustaining now, and in the future."  Olivia Laing.

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Reparative gardening, not the expected habit of gardening my parents exposed me to.  Garden Morals held.

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Hope your soul hears what Reparative Gardening offers.  Love, food, health, delight in learning, spirit, Nature, a voice wiser than your own.  For starters.

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Garden & Be Well,  XO T

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Not a sponsored post, and do like the Justin cowboy boots.  Hose off just as easily as rubber, my feet don't get wet, boots don't crack.

Your Body Connection to Soil Microbes: Good Health

"Albert Einsteins 5 Levels: 

5.  Smart

4.  Intelligent

3.  Brilliant

2.  Genius

1.  Simple

Simple transcends Genius."

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Several years into attending Garden Lectures and Garden Symposiums, a beloved speaker was scheduled for the podium.  Topic?  Soil.  Dreaded the topic, thought it a waste of a good speaker.  (Hope it's obvious I was in my 20's.)

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Early, for the favored front row.  He flipped me.  Soil is thrilling.  Soil is it.  He slowly waltzed the entire audience into understanding.  Soil is a living force.  A driving force.  Sacred.  He took us from truth, facts, information, to wisdom.

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Many types of microbes in soil are in our bodies, microbiomes we would die without.

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Decades pass, and new studies add to that original soil lecture.  

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Plant roots send electrical currents through the soil, to other plants, passing information of all sorts.  Who knew, electricity and sentience under our feet while plants communicate with each other, and us.

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You may not be interested further, but please admit it's quite good cocktail banter.  Beloved gives me the evil eye in social situations, when I've begun any arcane sacred truth about Gardens.....  He gets my, 'That's all', Miranda Preistly look in return.  

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Something beautiful, below, to put in your visual memory bank about roots and soil.
  

  

Pic, above, here.

Threading the parabolic knowledge amongst the unbidden knowledge I saw patterns amongst all the threads.  Roots and our bodies share the same electrical current.

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We 'know' our hand/forearm look like this, below.  In context with roots, what do we know now?

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"Love and deep truths are not based upon delivery "But upon the hearer, their emotional orientation and sensitivity, which appears to be encoded in our DNA via a particular gene that regulates serotonin in the brain.  So indicates the fascinating research of U.C. Berkely psychophysiologist and behavioral neuroscientist Robert Levenson." M. Papova.    Added to this science, I'd like to know which soil microbes are involved in the process.

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Pic, above, here. 

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Roots and hand and microbes and electrical current, "...we meet transcendence where we meet our ignorance." Sir Roger Scruton.

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Pic, above, here. 

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More hedge & meadow, above, the chair is yours.

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"The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge."  Bertrand Russell, 1925.

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In the garden, if we see, what the garden "..has taught... about paying attention, listening to what lies beyond consciousness or words."  Oliver Sachs.

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Garden & Be Well,  XOT

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Link, below, from the seedling/roots pic, above.  Take the link, you'll learn a lot about your health. 

Healthy Soil Microbes, Healthy People

"The microbial community in the ground is as important as the one in our guts."  TheAtlantic

Hedge & Meadow: Why It's The Best Garden Design Style

      "Simplicity is the END RESULT of long, hard work; not the starting point."  Frederick Maitland.

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Hedge & Meadow.  Hedge & Lawn, if you prefer, below, Aerin Lauder's home, inherited from her grandmother, Este Lauder.  Updated in understanding between grandmother & grandchild.

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Both women understanding the universal in the particular.

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Flowering plants take center stage upon the profane layer of gardening.  Time passes, and if you're lucky, Hedge & Meadow take center stage.  Once they do, you've found the sacred layer of gardening.

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You start gardening with your own stamp & heroics, a decided idea of what will be new & magnificent.  Best ever.  A season passes, and you see every effort, every dollar, your divine master piece, is all a sham.

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Worse, it's the most heroic sham ever.

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Nothing to do but laugh, in thanks.  

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Hedge & Meadow, another offering from God's sense of humor.  Hedge & Meadow are a pair of prophets without honor.  Humbly doing Earth's work, well before humans arrived.  

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Pic, above, here.

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Drone shot, Hedge & Meadow, below.  One hedge, is 2 walls.  What will you do with your choices?

   

Pic, above, here. 

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What is behind the hedge, below?

  

Pic, above, here. 

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Formal, Hedge & Meadow, above, Woodland, Hedge & Meadow, below.

  

Pic, above, here. 

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You can make a choice to plant bushes and grass and mow and fertilize and spray chemicals.  Pure profane.  Ok, in its place.  What place is that?  Not making a choice.  But, still, a civil glue to society, neighborhoods, in a manner.

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"All fragrant with woodbine and peaceful content and the leaf which the lime blossoms fling.  When the plain whispers love to the elm in the grove in the beautiful season of spring."  Aristophanes 450-388 BCE. 

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You can choose what Aristophanes chose, before Christ was born, and create Hedge & Meadow on axis with views from inside your home, becoming outdoor rooms, habitat for local fauna.  A thoughtful goodbye to profane, for the sacred.  You, your life, calm, refuge, sharing with family and friends.  A marina of grace between forays into the big waters. 

 

Pic, above, here. 

Meadow of Stick Trees, above.  LOVE the humor.

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"To believe in something, and not live it, is dishonest." Mahatma Gandhi

 

Pic, above, here. 

Another shot, above, of Aerin Lauder's garden.

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Hedge & Meadow are the maximum pollinator habitat we can create.  We are not separate. 

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"Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breath and the food we eat, and it is its own reward, as well for it is the beginning of happiness, just as self pity and withdrawal from the battle are the beginning of misery."

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There is an intelligence to our emotions.  In the garden, you'll be in charge, at first.  Keep sailing, you'll find a companion in that 'intelligence'.  Grace.

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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

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Yes, a marketing push for Hedge & Meadow, Garden Design, in your garden.

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Choosing Hedge & Meadow decades ago, discovering during global pandemic, a solid base of grace, calm, joy, a place to listen, ask, hear.  How could anyone not want to pass this forward?

 

How to Choose the Best Potting Table.

 Through the decades my wood potting tables each rotted. 

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Beloved says, "Call Ben, he's got some metal tables."

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Imagine, without effort, Beloved goes pure BRILLIANCE. 

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Life teaches letting go.  Gardens teach taking joy.

 

Pic, above, here.

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Moving into our ca. 1900 home on 5 acres I let something go, which I had to learn, should never have been left out.  

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Myriad layers of gardening went undone, worse, frustration.  Without knowing why.

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Gardens need a potting table.  Finally, it is written.  Landscapes need a potting table.

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 Why do we like gardens and Nature so deeply?  Their morality is sacred, not profane.

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Pic, above, here.

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Pic, above, here.

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Received this auction pic, below, today.

 

Pic, above, here.

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Instant fantasy, above, seeing these potting tables.  Bring them all home, enlarging, rearranging my potting table area.

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A bakery is going out of business, above.  A potting table room is waiting to be born.

 

 Pic, above, lost provenance.   

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Have a potting table?  No?  Please, put your name on the list of those on the hunt.....for a metal potting table.  

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We once knew land was here to provide for us.  "What right do we have to forget?"

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Potting tables are altars of thanks, and helping hands of grace. 

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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

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Beloved's finished several procedures, each with anesthesia.  One hospital let me inside, another did not.  It's a terrible thing dropping off a loved one at the hospital curb, and driving away.  Terrible. 

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He's tired, but working.  Results about the cancer blasted will take a month.

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Had to wait 4 hours in hotel lobby last week, after a late check-out, until hospital phoned.  Took a pair of my Common Place books, plenty of reading.

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A joy having 4 hours undiluted time to Common Place read/write.  Precious during the 'stress' of Beloved's health issues.

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From that day/time......The garden lets us play with time.  An amusement of attraction.  Every garden is about loss, but its lesson is gain.  Between loss and gain are spirit and awe.

Pic, above, here.

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If you don't know  about Common Place books........you must.  Mine have become companionship as the garden, and my pets......    

 

How To Use The Best Garden Design Template

Every garden is the same, below.  Literally, identical.  Spanning centuries these gardens survive, thrive, go invisible, revive.
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Trees + Focal Points + Shrubs + Meadow = A Good Garden
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They're the only type of Garden Design I want to do.  Why?  Each is unique, each is regenerative, each absorbs the personality of its location, architecture, and Gardener.  Though each garden is identical, looking at the map, each garden is green, looking at the terrain each garden is unique in Nature's lush decadences with rooms for you, your family, your friends, and dogs, and cats, and chickens, and.....
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"...combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought --- before there is any connection with logical connection.....in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others." Farnum Street.


Pic, above, here.
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Describe the garden, above, to yourself, in this moment.  How I'd like to know the words you're using.  How quickly you pull your words forth, the pauses you give to certain features.
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Trees, shrubs, meadow, above.  Canopy/Ceiling + Walls + Floor + Art (Furnishings), above.
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At its core this single Garden Design, above/below/below, is pulled from thousands of years of agriculture.  Nothing to spare in farming, a system of collapse without templated sequential attentions, to each layer, seen and unseen. 
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You are one of those layers.  Whether you think so or not.  This Garden Design is the framework to what has given beauty and fed the globe, well before humans arrived.
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"If humility were imagined as a visible thing, it would be soil: quiet, brown soft, maintaining networks underground and feeding the whole of the living world."  Jay Griffiths.  And the air we breath.














Pic, above, here.
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Simpler, above.  What do you see?  Trees, Shrubs, Meadow, Focal Point, above.  Canopy/Ceiling + Walls + Floor + Art (your home), above.
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"Many of us have been wonderstruck at the discovery of mindedness within the Earth and between trees, sensitive, ephoratory, and communicative."  Jay Griffiths
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Definitely, the tree, above, has me.  And you know which one.  


Pic, above, here. 
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A garden to be viewed from birds-eye, above.
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Trees + Shrubs + Meadow + Focal Point, above.  Yet, more-more-more of each.  
Parts of this garden, above, do not please me, "Don't fence me in." Cole Porter.  Pop open the pair of parterres in the foreground, I'm happy again.
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Often, Cole Porter, Frank Sinatra, AC/DC, Crash Test Dummies, Elaine Stritch, Julie Andrews and a few movie soundtracks pop up while I'm in a garden. Always unbidden.  Sometimes lines from books read decades ago.  Amusing. 
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 Pic, above, here.
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Same Garden Design, above, as all of the above, with age to it.
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Little maintenance needed, above, in this area.  Snip, snip, done for the year.
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This Garden Design style, all pics above, adapts to mid-century modern, farmhouse, Monet, Frank Lloyd Wright and etc.
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At the front end my gardening included everything above, and perennials, and and and and.
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"For who hath despised the day of small things?"  Zech. 4: 8-10  Makes me laugh every time I read it.
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So.
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At The End of The Day.
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Why this Garden Design style?
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Smallest input, greatest output.
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Forgot to mention, this style Garden Design, is greatest pollinator habitat, and non-toxic to Earth.
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Most important thing to know about this style Garden Design?  A third dimension is brought in.  The Garden, You, and a source of epiphany amongst the air, trees, meadow, birds, nurturing, caressing, loving.  Loving.
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In these gardens you will live wider, and know it, in addition to the arc of living long.
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These gardens give answers to questions you've found impossible to put words to.
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These gardens are your revival.  Go ahead, laugh.  Yet, put in this style Garden Design, revival will arrive.  "A sense of the numinous."  C.S. Lewis.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Each of you has been touched by 2020.  Cannot imagine the myriad layers.  Hope you have a garden, a botanical garden, a park, nature reserve, a neighborhood walk, somewhere to think, and hear, and be strong.
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Beloved's health has been caught up with hospitals shutting down for patients with cancer etc.  Testing was finally done a month ago, they found 2 new, serious issues.  Surgery for one went well last week, he's back at work.  Scheduling for the 2nd issue is in September.  His doctor said, "Immediately."  .   
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2020 has us, we have God.
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"If we are to live and have something to live for, let us remember, all of us, that we are the servants as well as the masters of our fields."  Henry Beston
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Because of the Garden Design template, above, I know fully, to this moment, what being masters-of-our-fields gives, harbors, teaches.

Creaturely Comfort: Pot Tables

     "A starting point for me in thinking about ourselves as creatures is the observation of Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, that now the art of being creatures is almost a lost art.  And I think that notion that we need to learn, we need to be skilled, we need to be wise, in order to be the creatures that, in fact, we are, that we think of creatures as anyone who's not human."  Ellen Davis.
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The custom of pots on tables has pleased humans for centuries.  It will please you.  Your Pot Table will be unique to all the world, from the beginning of time.  Literally.  As will be your creaturely pleasure.
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Pic, above, here.
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There is a nonlinear way to learn Garden Design, unique to each of us.
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Pic, above, here.
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Dry land was created but only planted on the 5th day. Once bare land was planted, then came blessing.  Perhaps that is the joy of your own Potted Table, it's an alter of thanks, beauty, delight.
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Pic, above, here.
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Hunting & Gathering for your Pot Table, siting, assembling, thinking thru the watering.
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"To be fundamentally more invested in finding nourishment rather than identifying poison."
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Pic, above, here.
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It is these small things you choose to surround yourself with, becoming totems of your core self.  Establishing your Pot Table, in the doing you'll know it's not the Pot Table, it's you.
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You are the artist of your life.  No matter the world.
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"This is precisely the time when artists go to work.  There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.  We speak, we write, we do language.  That is how civilizations heal.  I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and thought it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence.  Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge --- even wisdom."  Toni Morrison.
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Pic, above, here.
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 Entirely separate, is an inside Pot Table.
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Bringing the sacred inside, their sermon of grace.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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If you've never had a Pot Table outside, or inside.  You will not understand, until you have your own.  Promise, it will be there for you too.  Created by you, a harbinger of grace.

How to Site Urns on Stone Walls & Simplicity of Garden Design

Stone Wall & Finials.
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What will you use?  As a finial?
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, here.
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Pic, above, in my garden last weekend.
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Sited at end of stone retaining wall, above.  In case you were wondering how I chose 'exactly' where to site the urn.  Siting, in addition, for top of the urn to be 100% level.   
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Notice what's special about the urn?
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Subtle color, and no planting needed.  It's cast stone, and will be someone's delight at my estate sale.  Remember: When Choosing a Focal Point it Must Be So Wonderful it Will Be Fought Over at Your Estate Sale.
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Something else is beyond special about this garden, above. 
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If you want to be regenerative, which is far superior to sustainable, you must know the key ingredient to the garden, above.
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Tara Turf.  No lawn.  Total low meadow with clovers, violet, dandelion, pink sorrel and what the wind blows in.
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In addition, the shrub, above, is the native Buckeye.  It will get 10' tall x 12 ' wide, sun/shade, moist or not. 
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Gardening became so easy when I got out of the way.  When I listened.  When I copied Providence, and centuries of European landscapes studied across Europe.
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Stone Walls & Urns.................made for each other.
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Garden Design Question.  How much can you take away from a Garden Design and it holds together?
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It's the last question I ask myself when designing. 
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Do you dare be this simple, above?
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Why be this simple?  I want my garden to give beauty & joy for aging into my 80's, causing no stress, only grace.
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My style of gardening is not popular with Garden Design/Build Firms.  Can you see why?  Their staff is gauged successful by the quantities of plants, lawn, mulch, stone, irrigation installed, gaining the yearly maintenance contract for mowing, annuals, pruning, chemicals, fertilizers.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Garden Design Conservationist: The Ultimate Guide

At first sight, I understood these European gardens, below.  They spoke.

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The Ultimate Guide to becoming a Garden Design Conservationist is simple and short.

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The template never ceased in many countries.

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With plantings, below, at the curb, car toxins-lights-sounds are mitigated.  You get a bit more privacy, yet can see into the woodland across the road, without seeing cars.  In effect, owning your view, enlarging your garden.  Win/win.

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Lawn, behind the hedging, is a low meadow.  A mix of wildflowers, herbs, grasses, bulbs, what the wind blows in, Tara Turf.  Canopy trees, and understory trees at pockets.

Pic, above, here.

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Going into the garden, above, create your sacred environment within.  This painting, below, ca. 1912.

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Pic, above, here.

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Canopy trees, above, understory trees, tall shrubs, low shrubs, low meadow, seating, a small formation creating maximum pollinator habitat.  Choose to be in balance with your garden, it will gift you balance in your life.

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Pic, above, here.

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A new allee, above, and maximum pollinator habitat.  Add a bench/s, perhaps a narrow harvest table, above.  Perfect Garden Design Conservationist design, above, for a private home or the front of a subdivision.

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Pic, above, here.

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Versailles, above.  Wildwood, path, and formal fountain.  Sacred space, Man & Nature.  This isn't just for Versailles, it's for you.  Use native trees, no worries if you've space for only 2, and a large pot with water and simple jet of water.  Boom.  Versailles sacred space made to your custom needs, yet the flow, transcendence and filling of your spirit, immeasureable.

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Outside my office window, above, yesterday, late afternoon.  Sacred.

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Conservationist ideas in Garden Design are this easy.  Trees, Meadow, Natives.  This trinity doesn't need chemicals or fertilizers.

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Garden & Be Well,  XOT

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“If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us.” — Marshall Goldsmith, Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts — Becoming the Person You Want to Be

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Gardening is a rare luxury of choice no matter the bank account.

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 Cal Newport explains in his book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World:

“The ability to perform deep work is becoming increasingly rare at exactly the same time it is becoming increasingly valuable in our economy. As a consequence, the few who cultivate this skill, and then make it the core of their working life, will thrive.”

“Deep work” is work you do in a cultivated environment designed for flow. Deep work is purpose-driven. It’s not distracted. It doesn’t happen by accident."

Your garden, whether looking at it from inside your home, or outside within its embrace, shares flow and transcendence, if you choose to imbibe.

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” — Viktor Frankl

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” — Viktor Frankl

.“I’m pretty oblivious to a lot of things intentionally. I don’t want to be influenced that much.” — Jason Fried, the founder of Basecamp

“Your input determines your outlook. Your outlook determines your output, and your output determines your future.” — Zig Ziglar

Choose for your garden, what you want for it, Earth and your soul.  Staying in the zone, the flow, seeking epiphany and transcendence, they're there for you, in your garden.  More places, but "I'm pretty oblivious to a lot of things intentionally''.

"What did the tree learn from the earth to be able to talk with the sky?"  Pablo Neruda, tr. by William O'Daly.

Multiplied across generations and continents, we have derivative cultures with Nature Blindness for lack of creating healthy Garden Designs for Earth, self, soul, community.

If you're just beginning your Garden, go inside your home, and looking out the windows to site focal points, then go outside,  design and install in this order:

1. Trees

2. Meadow

3. Bushes

4. Focal Points (Pieces so wonderful they will be fought over at your estate sale.)

5. Groundcovers

Use as many natives as possible.  Use your County Extension Service for plant advice, they're providing best information, not trying to sell you anything.


Conservation Garden Design Equation (Use Natives/Neo-Natives or as many as possible):

Trees + Meadow + Bushes + Focal Points + Groundcovers = A Conservationist Garden Design

Conservation Garden Design Equation (Natives):

Trees + Meadow + Bushes + Focal Points + Groundcovers = A Conservation Garden Design