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.

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.

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

The Zen of Formal

"...the ability to start out upon your own impulse is fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own terms, not to mention the further and more fulfilling gift of getting started all over again --- never resting upon the oars of success or in the doldrums of disappointment....Getting started, keeping going, getting started again --- in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm..."
--- Seamus Heaney
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Most common phrase customers say when we meet, "Oh, I don't want anything formal."  Then proceed to describe what they want and show photos.  You know what's coming next.
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Every description, every photo of their dream garden, FORMAL.
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Pic, above, here.
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Classically formal dining room, above.  Graveled rectangle, focal point on axis, canopy/understory bushes/trees, walls, floor, flow, function, contrast, texture, seasons, sound. 
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Easily decorated for mid-century modern, or any style, zone, theme you desire.
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"Small change, small wonders --- these are the currency of my endurance and ultimately of my life." --- Barbara Kingsolver
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Show me your outdoor dining room.  Better, invite your friends to a meal.  Not there yet?  Want to be?  There lies your small change, small wonders. 
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No budget for outdoor furnishings for a bit?   Pair of saw horses with planks, as Martha Washington served myriad guests in their garden at Mount Vernon.  Better, improvise, rescue 'saw horses', and 'planks'.  With this mission, your outdoor dining room will be unique, though the garden design technique has been in use long BCE. 
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What is an outdoor dining room to you, if you don't have one now?  "The opportunity to experience yourself differently..." --- Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
 
Pic, above, here.
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"All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection.  So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible." --- William Faulkner
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Yes, you can do the impossible.  In the garden of your heart.  Sure it's impossible.  That's why it's there for you to do.  "We go on.  Because it is the hard thing to do.  And we owe ourselves the difficulty." --- Nikki Giovanni
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Touring a beautiful garden, with our British historic gardens expert and guide, after he had described a garden compost area feature we were standing in, a woman said, "That's inconvenient."  Quickly he responded, "Making love is work, but we do it."
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It is the difficulty of creating our garden, bringing its blessing.  Most often your 'difficulty' will be mental.  Seeing.  Seeing rightly, is the work.  And gift.
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Pic, above, here.
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"Clear your mind of 'can't." --- Samuel Johnson.
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Pic, above, here.
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Thrilling.  Beyond thrilling, above.  So little there, yet it's a garden.  Living in a ca. 1938 starter home or 1990 cluster home?  Garden Design, above, is for you too.
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Pic, above, here.
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Trees as total Garden Design, above.  You cannot go wrong choosing this path.  More, choose a tough native pollinator tree.  Choose to pollard, prune them to shape. 
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"And so we turn the page over/To think of starting.  This is all there is." --- John Ashbery
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Pic, above, here.
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How many times has this Garden Design been done across centuries.  This one leaves no gardener or garden or home behind.
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Works every time. 
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In a typical USA subdivision, this is a good Garden Design, above, to copy, and site a hedge of evergreens at the front of your lawn.  Tall enough to hide the road & cars, for sure, maybe tall enough to hide your first story.  Depends on your location, views, noise.
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Pic, above, here.
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The Well Placed Chair, above.  You know you've designed a good garden, when, in season, Nature takes over all your efforts.  Laughing at you.  And you like it. 
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Pic, above, here.
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Use pots that won't break, trees tolerating your zone, and drip irrigation, above.
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Adore how little is in the garden, above.  It's Tara Turf, green ball, hedge, canopy tree, house as backdrop, color theme, textures, flow.  Did you already see all those things, above, and name them to yourself?
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Pic, above, here.
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Hiding the pool.  Especially good, if you must put in a fence, yet have acreage.  Make your pool the surprise in a Faberge Egg.
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"You have neat tight expectations of what life ought to give you, but you won't get it.  That isn't what life does.  Life does not accommodate you, it shatters you.  Every seed destroys its container or else there would be no fruition." --- Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell, Playwright, Jungian analyst.
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Pic, above, here.
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This garden, above, uses the same Formal Garden Design as the top photo: rectangle, focal point, flow, canopy, understory, floor, texture, color, shapes.
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Just because epiphanies arrive doesn't mean changes will arrive effortlessly or soon.
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Choosing to have a garden, the one in your head, is as simple as Dorothy learning how to go home.
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Choose.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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A few  more from Florida Pier Scott-Maxwell.
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"You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours.  When you truly possess all you have been and done ... you are fierce with reality."
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"Making those we love happy sounds innocent as a dove, but it can be as destructive as a lion."
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&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
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"If we begin with certainties we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with doubts, and are patient with them, we shall end with certainties." --- Francis Bacon
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&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
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You realize this is a complete Garden Design course?  The important parts anyway.
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It's all important.  The Zen of Formal?  Easy to maintain, beautiful in all seasons, pollinators, lowers HVAC, raises property value. 
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&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
5 years, this summer, in our ca. 1900 home.  Began gardening this month, finally.  No clue gardening would not begin for 5 years.  Repairing the pond, drilling a well, renovating sheds, moving sheds, building sheds, creating roads, clearing invasives, and clearing more invasives.  Life, my mom, caretaking, death, then major illnesses with Beloved.
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Starting wasn't something chosen or thought about or anticipated.  Apparently I had been at the bottom of the ocean, and shot up for air about 5am three weeks ago.  Could not breath, live, another day, without starting my garden.
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Quick phone call to Susanne Hudson, sourcing Conservatory parts, windows/French doors, Conservatory seating, somehow buying a honking huge antique library case too,  Honker.   Honk-er.
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Hedges, Conservatories, Tara Turf, Potting Table, Trees, and my library.  Leaving my 30 year garden, missed most, my built-in Library, and Conservatory.  Can't make this stuff up, the soul speaks.
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Did you notice, 'Conservatories', plural?  Life is good.  One of our tiny historic sheds, has a pair of shed roofs, each side, Beloved already built.  Soon, the East Conservatory will be completed, and hopefully, this year, we'll also build the West Conservatory.
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Their views wildly different.  The new potting table was sited at this shed, already I'm potting up and crazy happy.  Thankful of my years as a professional propagator at a nursery with 7 hoop houses, each with a different type of use; forcing, cuttings, plugs, annuals, perennials, herbs.
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Found living without a garden & library......untenable a moment more.  Getting a potting table, 3rd potting table across my adult life, previous 2 were wood.  This potting table, ca. 1940, is custom made, 2 shelves, backsplash, and stainless steel, from a sorority house at University of Georgia. 
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Have never felt so at home here.  Literally.  I'm home.  Garden, Conservatories, Potting Table, Library.  Every bit of air I shot upward for.  Whole again.
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Pic, above, here.

Conservatory, Pandemic, Gardening: How Do You Want to Live?

"I understand that to move close to God is to move close to everything that human beings have ever experienced.  And that, of course, includes a lot of suffering, as well as a lot of joy."  Parker Palmer
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"But from time to time, back in the woods that primitive wildness was there, and if that's all God is, I'll settle for it....easily and thankfully."  Parker Palmer.
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"And so I now see the soul as that wild creature way back there in the woods that knows how to survive in very hard places, knows how to survive in places the intellect doesn't, where the feelings don't, and where the will cannot."  Parker Palmer
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Conservatory built for Penny McHenry Hydrangea festival, above, by Tara Dillard & Susanne Hudson, Better Homes & Gardens magazine shoot.
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Too long without a garden, 5 years since moving rural, my body/brain/spirit has shot up from the ocean with 2 thoughts, evergreen hedges and a conservatory.
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"The point of being an artist is that you may live....you won't arrive.  It is an endless search."  Sherwood Anderson.
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Susanne Hudson's Conservatory, above, from Country Living magazine.
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"Vocation is a gift not a goal."  Parker Palmer
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Old Quaker adage, "Let your life speak."
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How did I get 5 years, without starting my garden?
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A life wants to live in me.  My garden let it grow.  As my garden spoke, it taught my soul to speak. 
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Then I moved away from my 30 year garden.
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Susanne Hudson's Conservatory, above,.
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Gardening is walking the talk of thinking.
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Conservatory, above, my previous garden.
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Susanne Hudson's Conservatory, above.
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What should your garden aspire to?  The best in you.  Do you have that clarity?
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Take from the Greats....they will never leave you once you've taken them.  TAKE.
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Susanne Hudson's Conservatory, above.
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The irony of my gardening is how much non-ironic work my garden does  on me.
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Moving from my 30 year garden, I miss most, my Conservatory.  It had only been there my last 3 years.  Go figure.
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Conservatory, above, built by Tara Dillard & Susanne Hudson.
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"Design at its core, thrives when a human being cares enough to do work that touches another --- it doesn't thrive when it gets more efficient."  Seth Godin
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Yes, I do believe my garden is me touching another.
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Conservatory, above, built by Tara Dillard & Susanne Hudson.
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With, 'conviction, commitment and conscience', plan your garden.  Each will return greater in forms you've never known, but always knew.
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Conservatory, above, built by Tara Dillard & Susanne Hudson.
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"(Iris) Murdoch begins by reflecting on the fundamental difference between the function of philosophy and that of art --- one being to clarify and concretize, the other to mystify and expand." Maria Popova
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Conservatory, above, built by Tara Dillard & Susanne Hudson.
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Beloved renovated a small historic shed on our property and moved it exactly where I indicated.  Smart man, things go south, my fault.  How did I know where to place it?  The GREATS.  Moved shed to a new garden room, and pulled strings from the main house, making sure the shed/Conservatory 100% parallel to main house. 
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One side of the shed will become my new Conservatory.  The open shed roof, and back wall are dimensions for the new Conservatory.  Drew a picture, with measurements, texted pic to Susanne Hudson, "Do you have any windows for me to buy for my new  Conservatory?"
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My previous Conservatory was over a decade of dumpster diving old windows and doors, literally.  This Conservatory has no luxury of time.  Instead, fitting what Susanne has, to my dimensions.
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No text in reply, instead, a PHONE CALL.  "How would you like 2 pairs of French Doors at the front of your new Conservatory?"  Best phone call of 2020 so far.
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"Bad writing is almost always full of the fumes of personality."  Iris Murdoch.
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Bad gardening is almost always full of the fumes of personality.  Tara Dillard
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Taking from the Greats, has its purposes.  Fumes of personality?  I adore gardens, photographed, hinting nothing toward what continent or era of the garden. 
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"The epic side of truth, Wisdom, is dying out."  Walter Benjamin
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"Wisdom in the age of information."  Maria Popova
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My Conservatory, above, previous garden.   
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Building my new Conservatory is a freedom, of knowing what I want, knowing how to get it, knowing what it will give me.  Back to the Greats. 
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My Conservatory, above, previous garden.
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At the front end of building Gardens, and Conservatories, I thought it was all architecture, engineering and labor. 
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It's still all those things, yet they're layered by greater gifts.  More important.
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"Knowledge hinges on an act of correlation and interpretation.  At the top is wisdom, which has a moral component, it is the application of information worth remembering and knowledge that matters to understanding not only how the world works, but also how it should work and that requires a moral framework of what should and shouldn't matter, as well as an ideal of the world at its highest potentiality."  Maria Popova
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My Conservatory, above, previous garden.
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My Conservatory, above, previous garden.
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Client Conservatory, above, I put into a Garden Design.  They hired me to brighten up a 'Dark Corner'.  Muse reigns.
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Conservatory, above, my previous garden.
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Susanne Hudson Conservatory, above.
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Your Home and Garden must have a name, a color trinity, and garden rooms, each with a name.
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Susanne Hudson Conservatory, above.
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Sending pic of measurements for my new Conservatory, quickly named it, East Conservatory.  Easiest garden name ever.  Sometimes naming can take over a year. 
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Susanne Hudson Conservatory, above.
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The shed has 2 nice sides, both with metal roofs Beloved built.  First moment the shed was moved to its new location, I knew, there will be 2 Conservatories.  Cannot wait for the West Conservatory.  It faces mostly wooded shade, acres of view, including a pond and fading lake.  East Conservatory faces a hedged garden I'm planting now.  Lots of good sun, some shade, a bit 'formal' easy to maintain.
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Client's Conservatory, everything you see, above, is rescued.  My Garden design put the shape of the conservatory into the plan, we had a great conversation, poof.  This is 'their' detailed design, not mine.  Fabulous.
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"Information is increasingly cheap and wisdom increasingly expensive...."  Maria Popova.
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Gardening, Pandemics, Conservatories, we're each seeking the same gifts, of those gifts with no price tag.  Grace, transcendence, beauty, a knowing of who we are, what we stand for, how to live in that grace everyday.  No matter what each day brings.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Asked Beloved yesterday if I could borrow his old work truck for a few days, to pick up Conservatory parts with Susanne.  LIFE entered this story.  Alas.
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A much loved gardening friend, we've roomed several times across Europe and USA Eastern Seaboard studying historic gardens, and miscellaneous symposiums attended, flower shows, etc.  She's 77.  Had a chunk of breast cancer removed, feels great, gardening, busy.  She made the choice for no chemo/radiation. 
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Oh the things of life we've already shared.  More than that, blessedly, laughter always far greater than tears.
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Susanne knows her well, we 3 beautifully scarred, dusty, matriarchal elephants, each with our own continent, are slowly converging.  Soon, we'll all be in the far off garden of our friend.  Road trip.... 
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"I understand that to move close to God is to move close to everything that human beings have ever experienced.  And that, of course, includes a lot of suffering, as well as a lot of joy."  Parker Palmer