Simple Gardens: Love, Relationship, Poyeema

 Garden Design was settled in method centuries before Christ's birth.

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Whether we think so, or not.

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'There are places we can walk the road to ourselves, Nature is one of those roads, rare, meant for all.'

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God first created a garden.  His poyeema.  Sustenance, beauty, teacher, partner to our body microbiomes.  Gardens so love us, we're given the same poyeema to partake, or not.

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Garden Design, below, using Nature's residential Garden Design.  Stay with this.  It is for you, even if your home is atop a high-rise in NYC or you've just downsized to an apartment.  Gardens are a belief system.  A manner of living.  No matter the era or where you live.

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Decades of studying historic gardens across Europe, a pattern emerged early.  Trees, meadow, hedges.  Trinity of abundance.  

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 Trees, meadow, hedges, below.

  

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Our era, we go for flowers, I did, ca. early 80's.  Showy flowers.  Never considering whether native, invasive, or food for wildlife & soil.  That was me.  You'll never get judgment here, how could I?

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"With unexpected turns and a wicked humor, a meandering narrative that nevertheless knows where it's headed......The practicalities mere scaffolding for the good stuff." Aysegul Savas.  Hope you're already  smiling at this.  Putting together your first garden design is a gift of Providence.  Smiling Providence.

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Take the poyeema for your own to wield, see what you get, and what it does.  That's why you're here.  Trying to get there, or you're there, and enjoy the companionship.

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Know what's in the Garden Design, above?  Tree allee, low meadow, tall meadow, house on axis as focal point from gravel drive directly to front door, color trinity green-brown-white.  If oak trees, above, they're a top pollinator habitat, food for other animals, home to beneficial wildlife/fungi.  

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Two layered meadow, above, is another maximum pollinator habitat for wildlife.  A playground for your, viewshed too.  Welcome, is inherent.  No pokey, 'Welcome' sign needed.  Welcome is spoken in the Garden Design.  God's language.    

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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." Maria Popova.

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'Surprise', is your tool.  A layer of good Garden Design.  Below, a detailed garden room appears, passing from the tree allee.

 

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Surprise, works at all price points AND size properties.  Share-croppers cottage, mid-century modern, or, above.  Notice the pair of evergreen rounded shrub balls, above, at the entry to the right?  You want that shot too?

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Selfishly, I want this garden, above, shot again in a decade.  Instead, it's in my head, 10 years ahead.  In my head, quite a few plants have been removed.  What remains, maturing beautifully, beyond anticipation.

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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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Cone shaped conifer, above, if grown into a solid hedge, will create Surprise, and a pair of garden rooms, instead of a single garden room without surprise.

  

Same conifers, above.  Excellent shot, explaining why low hedges enclose precious plantings.  For centuries low hedges have kept chickens and turkeys from eating the family vegetables, herbs, pollinating flowers.

This garden needs no npk fertilizers, chemicals, or irrigation once established.  Less mowing than traditional lawns.

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Trees + Hedges + Meadows + flowers/herbs = Good Garden Design across thousands of years.

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Site layers of the equation on axis from views inside your home.  Place drives & paths on axis from doors, entries from property line, and meeting each other as needed.

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Why does it matter?  We're running out of bees.  There are few bugs of any type killed on our windshields.  Fertilizers are sterilizing soil and toxic to groundwater.  We don't need chemicals in our gardens, we need Natives and near natives  You can bring back what we've killed.

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"Peterson - as did Jung & Hillman - warns that failing to dialogue with Time leads to a forgetting of adaptive modes of human living & thriving: a loss of values or what keepers of indigenous shamanistic traditions call a "Loss of Soul".  

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You've come looking for your Garden.  Instead you've found more.  Congratulations !  It's the result of Nature giving you a personal poyeema.

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' Logoi  =  Codes of an Age '

 

Later in the season, above, the tall meadow has grown.  Not the decade shoot I want to see, but better already in a few weeks.  Imagine a decade.

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These gardens, above, are not about ego.  This garden is about Love, Relationship, Poyeema.  Trinity given to each, from Providence.   Will you trust, and take?

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How does it relate to living in an apartment?  Love, Relationship, Poyeema follow you all the days of your life.  Whether you partake, or not.

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Garden Design is this simple.  Always has been.

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Using Natives...................Trees + Hedges + Meadows + Flowers/Herbs  = Good Garden Design 

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Garden & Be Well,   XO T 

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More, about poyeema.

 

All pics, above, here. 

 

Simple Landscapes & How They Do So Much For Us

"I think in concepts, not words." A. Einstein. 
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Until reading, above, a few days ago, I had no words to describe my thought processes to anyone outside my tribe.  They don't need that; they understand without words.
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I think in metaphors with drop down menus, punctuated with equations made of words and math symbols, overlayed with visuals, background sounds and music, topped with templates formed from books read & movies seen.  Simplified, I think in metaphors, not words.
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How do you think?
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Seriously, how do you think?
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When did you realize your thinking 'style' was a bit different from most?
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College years, a boy I dated said my thinking was 'quirky' and 'romantic'.  His way of saying, crazy?  I should have asked him to clarify.  We're all entitled to opinions.   


Pic, above, here.
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In a mash-up of thought processes, taking in visuals of gardens, from birth, playing & working in gardens since age 3, studying historic gardens globally since age 16, designing gardens professionally since my 20's, there's something I know for sure about gardens. 
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Both gardens, above/below, are top of their game, best of the world's gardens, since roughly ca. 1400.
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Why?
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Can you name the important layers each garden has?
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Can you describe why these layers are important?
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Who is the primary beneficiary of these gardens?
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Pic, above, here.
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Take your time.  Life conspired my bits of knowledge, over decades, in client gardens designed historically, and in historic gardens.  More, I didn't know what I was seeking, beyond the hunger to seek more knowledge about gardens. 
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We've not progressed, from these gardens, above.  We've lost these gardens, Nature's pinnacle of gardening.  Templates and stories greater than survival.  Lives richly lived.  Survive vs. Thrive.
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Listen to the bees.  Listen to the raising of children.  Listen to the health of our bodies.  Listen to the laws of governments pertaining to land, water, agriculture, livestock, us.  Listen to the health of our forests, wildlife, climate.  Listen to how you think of all these things.
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What are you looking at in the gardens, above?
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Gardens little changed in many centuries.  A type of gardening supporting a family, villages and cities, for centuries.  Agrarian. 
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Their formula: Wildwood + Meadow + Stone Focal Point = Lives Well Lived, Nature well nurtured and in return, Nature nurturing all.
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Tending these gardens, poyeema, imparts knowledge gained from putting body to Earth in washing of the servants feet.  More than self-evident 'inalienable rights' given, in the garden is our health, its micro-biomes formed directly from Nature.  Nature talking to us, literally, via her electricity, bacteria, more.  Who hasn't been humbled learning about our gut biomes controlling more of our brain, than 'we' do.
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You have the components now, of the gardens, above.  Do you know how they work?
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Meadows are Nature's ecosystem for specific maximum types of wildlife, bacteria, fungi, insects, etc.  Woodlands are another of Nature's ecosystems for specific maximum types of wildlife, bacteria, fungi, insects, etc.  Life forms expand where margins meet.  Life-happens-in-the-margins.
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Where woodland meets meadow, Nature's pollinators are greater, increasing crop yields by 80%.
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Next, same topic, different idea.  Assignment of Thought.
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Your garden.  How could you turn your garden, into the style, above.  What would it take?  Don't forget, your home.  It must be considered as backdrop, focal point, and where your garden begins, from interior views.
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Yes, you're allowed to break the rules, above.  If they're broken using metaphor, templates, and their equations followed.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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Secondary benefit to this Garden Design Assignment.  Taking your brain into your garden, to design, separated from your bank account.
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All the world is a garden designer, until they go into their own garden.  Taking your brain off your wallet, is a game changer.
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BTW, I'm left handed.  Also the daughter of an Air Force test pilot, during the years they didn't know pilots all have daughters.  Getting my license renewed last year, an elderly African-American woman began talking to me immediately when I sat down after matriculating thru the first wave of counters/officials.  She had seen that I was left handed, she's left handed.  We talked of how our brains worked, what we liked to do.  Sisters traversing many of the same mental models through life.  Of course we hugged when we parted. 
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Who's the primary beneficiary of the gardens, above?  Earth.  She has her people working with her Nature.  How did we lose simple?  It's on each of us, to get it back.

How to Stage Small Potted Plants With Your 'Sacred Fire'

In 1781, Thomas Jefferson wrote,

"Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth."

Thomas Jefferson
Quote, from, Here.
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Hadn't seen this particular quote, above, until today.  I think we're all born with that 'sacred fire', a few in any given century, keep & stoke that 'sacred fire'.  You are one, reading this far.
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Jefferson's belief, above, quite dangerous, still, to world governments.  (Why think small?)  Taking the privilege of toiling, poyeema, with the Earth, provides more than food for the body.  Working with the soil, feeds epiphanies to the soul.  Each era garners this truth; we each have the gift of inalienable rights, from Providence.
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Filthy lucre is not part of this transaction.  Free to all; for the taking.  Tasha Tudor signed off many of her letters with a part of this 'sacred fire', Take Joy.  She knew, Joy is always present.  It's our job to 'take'.
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Pic, above, here.
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Painted, above, by Rembrandt Peal, ca. 1801, there is no loss of desire, for this geranium, and its pot, ca. 2020.  Why is that?  I must have both.  Oddly, the geranium, tall, does not look staked.  How is it not weeping over?  Ironically, the pot looks artisan made, ca. 2020.  How I want to know the pot by touch, the geranium too.  What is the fragrance of this geranium?  May I lightly touch its leaves, and their scent remains on my hands?
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What is their soil mix, how does it smell?
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Pic, above, here.
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What happens without 'sacred fire' ?  This, at a museum, above.  (Macro thoughts about 'sacred fire' in the opening, taking it to micro thoughts for the closing.  Sacred-fire-cares-not, large/small, it burns bright, in love.)
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No soul, above, with Jefferson's 'sacred fire' to make the pots/flowers a setting for the art on the wall.  Somewhere along the way to the museum, these poor bulbs were smashed sideways.  Grocery stores are better at display.
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Further, what's with those sticks/string, above ?
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Sticks should be dark twigs from tree or shrub, and string a dark jute twine.  Hyacinths don't need staking, and if staking is done, it should be created with as much 'sacred fire' as the paintings were created, and hung, on the wall.
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Are those pots, above, set bare on the table?
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Pots could be placed on terra cotta saucers, or a pair of Chinese plates, from the museum collections, creating a scene to partake with the art on the wall.  They are definitely not positioned properly.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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One of my mentor's, Mary Kistner, had her memorial service at a museum.  It was standing room only.  An artist, several mediums, Mary had a special talent for hanging/displaying other artists work, for many museums across USA.  Hence my thinking museum art displays are quite-a-thing.
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How quickly did you realize the potted flowers had been smashed in a mishap?  Before, or after, you looked in amazed curiosity at the sticks/string?  Did neither register, only part?  Now that it's pointed out, do you realize why it is important to point out?  "...men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely as if gardening were the greater perfection."  Alexander Pope, ca. 17th century.
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How I would love to see what Mary would do with this art display, above.
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Mary was about 4 decades older than me, and from first meeting I was moth to her Sacred Flame. 

How to Garden Like You Mean It: Macro Layer

Easy fix, below.  See the problem?
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Ok, slow down.  Define the Garden Design problem, below.
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Next, how would you fix this problem?
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Quite an excellent Neo-Le-Jardin-Rustique, below.
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What's stopping it from being a Purist Le Jardin Rustique?


Pic, above, here.
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Garden Design problem, above, belongs to the pair of pots.
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No worries one is smaller than the other.
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Major issue? Differing heights of the pots.
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In Italy, studying historic gardens, if only one thing is learned, it is Pot-Rims-at-Same-Height.
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Pot, at right, above, must be raised on a plinth, both pots at equal rim height.
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Plants not matching, not a big issue. 
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Next topic.  What's keeping this garden, above, from being a purist agrarian garden?
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The lawn, a monoculture lawn. 
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Properly, the 'lawn', above, should be a low mixed meadow.  Poof, Le Jardin Rustique, and fully agrarian.
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What's gained with fully agrarian?  Several items on agrarian list, above, one is at the top, static.  The other items allowed dynamic order.
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Maximum pollinator habitat is at the boundary of meadow to woodland.  Life happens at the margins. 
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Creating maximum pollinator habitat is more than sustainable, regenerative, eco, green, reduces climate change.  What is this ingredient, of maximum importance, about pollinator habitat, and its relationship to you?
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Stewardship.
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Stewardship to yourself, others, wildlife, Earth.
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Stewardship in action, a layer of poyeema from Providence.  Washing of the servant's feet.
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Nature's gift to us, if we understand her language.
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Garden & Be Well,  XO T
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A client mentioned, Life happens at the margins, and I wrote it on a scrap of paper.  A few days later I texted a girlfriend with same skin/hair coloring as mine, "Need to buy blush, what color?",  "Orgasm, by Nars." she replied. 
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Under, Life happens at the margins, I wrote, Nars Orgasm, on the scrap of paper.
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A couple weeks later, Beloved asks me, "What is a Nars Orgasm, what's going on?"  With an odd countenance. 
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He had seen that scrap of paper laying on my dresser, after I had recently bought the blush online.
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Blew his bubble.  He was All-In on whatever a Nars Orgasm presented.
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Orgasm is the perfect color for my hair/skin.  Had never bought Nars before and have since ordered other items from them.

Take What's Best for You: Agrarian vs. Industrialized

My grandmother grew up on a farm, a land grant from King James to our family.  We track to the Revolutionary War era.  Her only child, my mom, did not relish caring for chickens, pigs, or crops.
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Dad's family also dates to the Revolutionary War era, along with something quite American, he was a legal Native American Indian, Cherokee.  Wonderful, knowing I have the blood of 2 great-great grandmothers, 100% Cherokee.
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Both sides of my family, until my grandparents, lived agrarian lives.  Centuries upon centuries of agrarian knowledge.
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Good and bad.  Dad went on to be part of the core team of 50 NASA engineers putting man on the moon.  Cell phones/laptops came from that program, and more.  Glad he didn't stay agrarian.
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What's the point, where is this headed?  It took only a single generation, my parents, to lose centuries of agrarian knowledge.  Lessons to be learned before we walk, or talk.  E. M. Forster takes this up with the character of Leonard Bast in, Howard's End.
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From earliest memories I knew industrialized landscapes were wrong.  Real landscapes were the marshes, pastures full of Longhorn cattle, Pecan orchards, cattails in the drainage ditches along the roads, Oak trees trailing moss above meadows full of white clover,  and whatever else the tropical winds of Galveston Bay blew in.  Thought everyone knew which landscapes were the right landscapes.
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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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Realized, early 20's, I was society's strange one.  Society adores industrialized landscapes, mow-blow-go-commodify all they touch-fertilizers-chemicals-mulches-annuals.  Industrialized landscapes are written into law via deed restrictions and HOA's.
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Pic, above, here.
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Marvelous young orchard with guilds, and potager, above.
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Getting that 2nd college degree, in my 20's, horticulture, knowing it was bogus USA industrialized landscape nonsense, it was off to study historic gardens across Europe for decades.  First time seeing this type of garden, above, moth-to-a-flame.  Pure agrarian.
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This is how I garden, and design gardens, decades now.  It's still a rare profession, designing agrarian based gardens.  Illegal for millions of Americans, millions more think they are 'messy', see pic, above.  Why do they think they are messy?  I think, because they don't realize what they are looking at.  Why should they?  Most are generations away from agrarian living.
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Looking at the pic, above, I see the poyeema of Providence.  God's workmanship, gifted as the joy of handywork for ourselves, if we deem to partake.  They did, above.  How fine, above, if a full'ish moon and warm'ish evening are expected, the tail end of fall, dahlias still showing, apples on the branch, a picnic dinner, wine, friends, blankets and large pillows in the orchard, in celebration.
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Ironically, not too different from the life George Washington or John Adams knew.  America was founded upon agrarian models.  It's good to have choices beyond agrarian.  Yet, in the macro, global industrialization has been at the agrarian expense, especially industrialized livestock.
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"...art is what makes us not only human but humane."  Iris Murdoch.
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Losing the stewardship agrarian life instills, has led to not 'seeing' industrialized livestock as an issue.  Same thread as not 'seeing' what this garden, above, means.  Same issue as our health diminished with industrialized vs. agrarian farming, and, industrialized vs. agrarian landscaping.  While we harm ourselves, and livestock with industrialized methods, we're poisoning groundwater, killing mycorrhizal fungi, why that matters, here, killing pollinator habitat for insects/birds/wildlife that migrate, only to journey to areas now bereft of food, so they die, after millions of years having followed the same migration patterns.  Jack Nicholson,with his best smile and unkempt greasy hair,  couldn't ask it better, "Who are the killers now?".
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Pic, above, here.
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Sacred vs. profane.  Pairs of words, in opposite, shout at me, especially when they make me think.  Humility vs. hubris is a nice pair of words read this morning.  From my own Commonplace book, Mystery-Meaning, Creation-Transcendence, Law-Grace, Righteousness- Corruption, Universalism-Particularism, Pious-Secular, Compassion-Violence, Justice-Judging.  In the garden, gardening, performing the gift of poyeema, pairs of words find their journey from the noise of daily life and neo-fixed mindset into the realms of transcendence with a growth mindset.
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It is the garden passing along epiphanies.  Do you do this too?
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"....if there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something."  Federico Fellini.
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Part of my mission statement, for decades, for my garden, "......I want to look out any window, any day, and think, Oh Wow."  Seeking awe.
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"Awe enables us to sense in small things the beginnings of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common & simple."  Joshua Herschel Abraham.
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Have you already found your garden to be a talker?  "The habit of prayer, by which I mean the habit of listening."  Loren Eisley.
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With Industrialized Gardens, "It is the shrewdness of the fox after the chicken.  A low order of mentality often goes with it."  Sherwood Anderson.
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Working with agrarian gardens there are myriad 'greats' to work with, they have died, but not the dynamic of their poyeema.  Working with them, is one of the greatest joys of my life.  How can I not accept the rebuke from Alexander Pope, "My gardens improve more than my writings."  Serious rebuke, taken to heart, yet with complete humor of good will.
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Garden & Be Well,   XOT
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Pic, above, take from Ben Pentreath's blog, I think you'll enjoy it.

Do You Have Poyeema With Your Garden?

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


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


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

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

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

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

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


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