2 Surprising Christmas Decorations

Pop from the inbox a few days ago, below.  Brilliant.     

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More than style, are the Christmas colors.  Along with the Constance Spry silhouette, & choice of vase. 

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Jenny, my mother-in-law has been gone for 25 years, age 57, breast cancer.  This Christmas arrangement spoke.  First time, in a quarter century, I wanted to text Jenny a pic, and say, 'I'll do 2 of these for the Christmas table.'  Holidays were always at her home.  Her beautiful dining room filled with her children, their spouses, grandchildren, maybe an elderly aunt or grandmother.  The full monty of a true Southern matriarch.  

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I couldn't text Jenny, so it's for you.  Hope you put this in your visual file for a Christmas or Winter meal with friends, family.  If you truly love it, list, below, of ingredients and their designer. 

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"Poinsettia, paperwhites, and amaryllis bring Christmas cheer to a lovely crowd of blooms and greenery in a masterful mix by Kiana Underwood of Tulipina."

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Pic, above, Flower Magazine.

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These flowers, above, are Chekov, The Cherry Orchard, in far too many ways.  Hint of heartbreak, sinking into the poetry of their beauty.  Sifting both, into, now.  Trusting the beauty.  "Stories are carried in the body.", thankful of living this story.  The honesty of beauty, its victory.

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Pic, above, here .

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Of course, so simple, above.  First thought, "All those Christmas trees seen at thrift stores for nothing.", passing them by for years.  'Hubris of ignorance.', much?

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Our ca. 1900 home has a front porch and back deck needing a bit of lit forestry.  Plenty of time to hunt/gather trees, next year, and figure out how to weight the trees on the back deck from often brutal winds.  

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Ah, next year.  "Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the nose." Mike Tyson.  Epitaph, 2020.

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"How we see a tree is how we see the world, and in the act of seeing we reveal what we are: "The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way."  Maria Popova.

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Two gifts, above, surprising Christmas decorations. 

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Garden & Be Well,   XO T

Top 3 Garden Design Rules

Which major Landscape Design rule do you see, below?
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Which subsidiary Landscape Design rules do you see, below?
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If you had this single garden pic, below, to teach a Garden Design course, what does your hand-out look like?  What are its headings?


Pic, above, here.
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Great wisdom, above.
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Choose a pot so wonderful, it never needs planting. 
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What else about this pot, above, must be copied in your garden?  For every pot, focal point, and piece of garden furniture you consider, ask yourself, "Is this piece so wonderful it will be fought over at my estate sale?"
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Another bit of wisdom from, above?
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A garden designed to look beautiful in winter, will be beautiful all year.
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Best Garden Design book ever written, is titled, The Garden In Winter, by Rosemary Verey.
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How best to site groupings of plantings?  Contrast foliage textures, colors, sizes, contrast shapes of plant silhouettes, mix evergreen plantings with deciduous, create architecture of a room/s with ceiling (sky)-walls-floors, include art/function/change thru the seasons, site focal points on axis from main views of the house, plantings must include scent/blooms/fall color/berries, plantings must be deer resistant/drought tolerant/bug-fungus proof and cycle with interest throughout the year.
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This is fun, from a single garden pic we've already started a nice Garden Design course.
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Urn, above, is a delight, in memory at my own stupidity, ahead of epiphany.  How do you think I was able to have an empty pot epiphany?  Seriously, anyone out there had the Empty Pot Epiphany too?  Found a quote this year my mom wrote down, "Genius may have its limitations but stupidity is not handicapped." 
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Garden & Be Well,    XO Tara
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Yes, these bits of Garden Design are this important, for me to repeat, repeat, repeat.....  If you don't have The Garden In Winter, plenty of used at good prices with the link. 
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Copied a simple historic garden room, in our ca. 1900 home this year, a life moment arrived recently, and beyond measure that garden room, and Nature, tended, in great love,  not only a life moment, but the entirety of my life.  Why do you want to Garden Design?  I know why I do, it's for those moments, knowing another may never come.  And that is fine, what has been received already is beyond measure.

Anna Wintour has Tara Turf?

Age 8, saw my 1st garden like this, below, in Augusta, GA.  The adults were content to stay inside & chat.  I did the rude child thing, and begged to go outside.  They were glad to get rid of me.  Had to be, I was more than glad to be gone from them.  Not until I saw the movie, Beetlejuice, did anything describe how I felt, going outside that house, that day, into the garden.  Another world.
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The garden was entirely green, wild, mischievously wild.  Looking ahead, left, right, the garden was telling me to go everywhere, all a fabulous mystery, yet speaking to me in a language I knew.  And, that feeling of being alone, in this adventure, perhaps explains more fully, in adulthood, studying historic landscapes across Europe for decades.  And creating the garden for myself.
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Few ask for. or understand, this type garden, up front, in USA.  I design as much of them into the ubiquitous requests, as I can.  A tiny handful, across 3 decades, have asked for the full monty.
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I was caught by this garden, below, being presumptuous.  It's owner, in the public eye for decades with an international successful career, and public persona so Cruella Deville, Meryl Streep played her in a movie.  The garden, below, takes her mask off.  Anna Wintour's garden, below.    












Pics, above, here.
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Full article from NYTimes, here.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT

Subsidiary Focal Points

Exactly why gardens should be simple, below.  Let Nature speak, play, sing, work, be in companionship to your life.

Pic, above, here.

 

Pic, above, here.

Did you know your garden is a proscenium for spectacle?  I love the small moments, the never imagined, unbidden.  Perfect.  Tear drops of laughter, amongst time & galaxies.  

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Creating these moments, name it to claim it.  Macro rule, 1 focal point per area.  Micro rule, subsidiary focal points allowed.

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Garden & Be Well,    XO T

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Will never forget the years of lunches in my previous garden, during summer, and hearing the hummingbirds zoom over my head.  Do you really think I knew to design my garden for that to happen?  My best Garden Design learning was finally understanding classical Garden Design rules, FINALLY copying them.  Once accomplished, Nature arrived.  Nature more like Tinker Bell than can be explained, excepting through letting Nature reign.

Garden Design: Temporary Focal Points

Years ago, before the advent of cell phones, driving, I passed a huge white wisteria, in full dripping bloom, engulfing a mature loblolly pine.  I made a mental note to get my camera, and drive by again.  Somewhere in the bowels of my slide boxes, is that picture.
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Someone else thought the combo, white wisteria/loblolly pine, was threatening.  Within the week, both cut to the ground, gone, poof.  As if they had never been.  
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Finding this, below, on Pinterest, recently, I'm able to relive those moments, a-thing-of-beauty-is-a-joy-forever.
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More particularly, the few days/moments of bloom, are Temporary Focal Points.  In designed gardens, there is great humor, to me, in the Temporary Focal Point.  Without effort Nature reigns, like electricity, all we can do is harness the magic.



Pic, above, here.

Garden & Be Well,   XO T
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Within a week of photographing the white wisteria, and about a mile away, I discovered  dogwood tree in full creamy white blossom, dripping with long light purple blossoms of a wisteria.  Got pic of it too.  About 2 years later, dogwood/wisteria were cut to the ground.
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John Keats, 1795-1821, below, from here.

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast
That, whether there be shine or gloom o'ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.

Therefore, 'tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being, and each pleasant scene
Is growing fresh before me as the green
Of our own valleys: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city's din;
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I'll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimmed and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end!
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.