Plants With Stories

A garden is a lovesome thing. I took a stroll around my yard early this morning. It was chilly. The leaves, or what was left of them were shivering, and Sophie very sensibly stayed indoors. Those few leaves that are still hanging on are producing some spectacular colors, albiet in small bursts. My yard is in the midst of it's slow progression into a whispering peace. I have been strolling around my yard for the past 8 months since we moved in, trying to discern what is missing, what doesn't feel quite right.

I realized that this is the first time in 25 years that I have lived in a home where the plants don't have stories. The story of the person who gave it to me, like the roses my mother-in-law loved like children, or the velvet dahlias his grandmother was so proud of. The stories of the trips involved that inspired me to plant, or some childhood memory like the smell of grandmas green onions, or the volunteer that came up in the garden of a former house, or the fake geraniiums that I stuck in the ground in my garden in the desert because nothing else would grow.

I love a plant with a story

Childhood Wonder

"We need love's tender lessons taught, as only weakness can;
God hath his small interpreters; the child must teach the man."
-John Greenleaf Whitier




I love teaching K-6th grade fine arts. I anticipate my time with each student with great delight. Children are definitely the freshest, sweetest part of the race. They are magical creatures! They fill my days with joy and good humor and add to my wonder of being alive. It is truly awe- inspiring to rediscover the joy, excitement and mystery of this world that I live in.

Lord,
Please let me see the virtues that children have in their lives, the joy and enthusiasm of looking forward to each day with glorious expectations of wonderful things to come. Help me see the vision that sees the world as a splendid place with good fairies, brave knights and glistening castles reaching toward the sky. Help me see the radiant curiosity that finds adventure in simple things, tree branches worshiping you, the mystery of billowy clouds, the magic of of falling leaves. Please give me the tolerance that forgets differences, the genuineness of being oneself; to be simple, natural and sincere. Give me the courage that rises from defeat and tries again, after spilling paint on a finished artwork. Give me the believing heart that trusts others, knows no fear, and has faith in a Divine Father who watches over His children from the sky. Please Lord, let me become like the little child, that I may find again the Kingdom of Heaven within my heart.

It's Bloomin' Spring!

"All at once I saw a crowd, a host of golden daffodils." -William Wordsworth


Hyacinths, Narcissus, and other brave bulbs are sprouting through barely thawed soil to glorify their Creator. Spring is officially here and everything is looking grand!

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine..."

From Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream

There is such wild beauty described by Oberon in Midsummer Night's Dream, I would love to create such an enchanted garden in my own suburban plot of God's earth. My garden would possess very wildness of this fairy glade, the tapestry of flowers and plants that give it it's magic. I am attracted to the disorder of the place, because sometimes it is the very disorder, abandoning my efforts to control, giving into that indolent luxuriance of allowing nature to do as it pleases sometimes, that usually gives something more beautiful than my own scheme can imagine.

What is more lovely and truly relaxing and refreshing, than the sight of a wild flower meadow, dazzling with brightest flashes of color against the contrasting richness of tall and swaying green grasses? The medieval idea of a perfect garden was 'a meadow starred with a thousand flowers.' When I look at the almost mathematically precise grids of some manmade gardens, the flowers standing to attention like soldiers, each sort of the same height, as though measured, everything arranged with the exactness of an obsessive compulsive, I am reminded of the world, striving, work, there is none of that relaxing and peaceful feeling of letting go, being part of nature as it enfolds us in it's luxuriant beauty, of abandoning ourselves to pleasure or dreams as we must to really enjoy.

I'm imagining cutting flowers, potted boxwoods, Fenway Park Boston ivy, fresh lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, jalapenos, wisteria, fruit trees and bushes, rose arbors, hydrangea,a bird bath garden, butterfly garden, fountain, grass and stepping stone paths. Oh where to begin????????

Apres la neige

"The falling snow is a poem of the air." -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The second serious get down and boogie snowstorm came along this week, we were royally pasted with a beautiful blanket of snow that made everything look interesting and fresh. Even though there won't be any picnics here anytime soon, this is pure magic.

At first,enduring the freezing winter nights and crisp winter days inspired harsh feelings in the northerner in me, feelings that I had all but erased from the recesses of my mind during my eight years in the desert. Nature is indeed capricious, unpredictable, sometimes violent, and resistant to the cozy human notions of benign order and safety that I felt in the desert. After a few days though, I began to appreciate the stillness, silence and darkness of the winter that forces one to concentrate on renewing and affirming human relationships. Let it snow!