Last Forever

This time of year makes me want to cry out like Goethe's Faust, "Verweile doch!" "Last forever" but this is our augenblick, the blink of an eye. Monday evening I heard the locusts sing for the first time this year.  Every year I think I'll know it, the moment when it becomes real summer.

And every summer I'm caught by the surprise of the locusts with their bugle like announcement that it's well and truly summer. Yes the calendar says summer, depending on how you mark it, either on Memorial Day or the summer solstice of June 21; but to my mind those are the salad days of spring.  Summer begins when the locusts say it begins.  This year that was Monday.

I knew spring was slipping away as the roses faded.  I forget every year that nature pauses before showing her summer colors. She breathes in and out in green foliage, all verde. I feel real grief at spring's passing.  It marks another spring spent of my lifetime allotment of springs.  Did I spend it well? I worry.

"Innocence sees that this is it, and finds it world enough," Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.  Perhaps that's what I seek, an innocence easily satisfied, content.  Often I find myself panting after perfection, stuck in a loop of wanting to hold this moment just a little longer and squeeze in the next moment too.

But the rain comes and washes it away, the petals of this moment floating in the street gutter. "What I call innocence," Dillard writes, "is the spirit's unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object.  It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration."

Let us go, off to Linda's garden, delightfully weed free, where we can all find a taste of that innocence of spring becoming summer. (We've toured Linda's home several other times you can find those links here and here)

Look at these fuchsia!

These yummy apricot roses are a gift for her daughter.  Linda walked me to the car to make sure I didn't leave with one of these pots!  Even those of us who long for a spiritual perfection sadly are not above pilfering our good friend's roses.

I felt so inspired seeing Linda's beautifully weed-free garden.  Notice how all of her plants have a little breathing space?

Linda's got an eye for detail I admire.  Look at the little iron fence which provides needed support for these phlox.  Linda knows how to combine utility and beauty.

She's a generous friend too. I've got a pot of these hot pink phlox sitting on my patio right this minute, waiting for me to clear a space in one of the gardens for them, a gift from Linda.

Linda is so clever, notice how she mixed fever few in with her annuals to give these window boxes some height.

Here she uses hosta to  fill out a window box. Of course!  Why not use perennials in window boxes?!

Her porch is charming too with it's many colorful pots. I love the little wobbly bench.

I have several wobbly benches of my own.  Prince Charming keeps trying to pitch them out when I'm not looking.  I understand his desire for a well curated and lovely home and garden, something ripped from the pages of a magazine.  But these little wobblies remind me of the flesh and bone, the sinew and wildly open-mouthed wobbly clay vessel I am, always threatening to tip over.

Yesterday morning we had an early morning downpour. Later the sun came out without heating up the morning.  It was a lovely, golden morning for a walk. The leaves of the trees held onto the big fat rain drops unwilling to let go until a gentle breeze nudged the fat water droplets off the edge of the leaves, where the early morning sunlight caught them and lit them so that it looked as though I walked through a gentle and intermittent shower of the softest gold. The moment stretched out, lasting the entire length of the walk. Only reluctantly did I return home.

The trick of living in the moment is to let each come through us and pass.  Like nature we breathe through the moments and then they are gone.  We empty out so we can take the next moment in.  Our attention too short, lasting only 2.3 to 12 seconds research shows, to crowd much in.

Picasso suggested that we give up trying to gain perspective as painters do with trompe-l'oeil and find instead trompe-l'esprit. My good friend, Brenda, expresses trompe-l'espirit by reminding me to live life with fingers wide open instead of grasping after life with closed fists. It's only by opening and letting it pass through our fingers that we capture the moment, a closed fist, closed heart, closed mind, closed eyes capture none of these golden moments raining down on us.

Dillard says, "These are our few live seasons. Let us live them as purely as we can, in the present." Amen.

Happy 4th of July to my sparkling readers!  Let's all go out and live like fireworks, shinning for our brief stunning moment.

It's a jungle out there

The gardens have all developed a definite jungle vibe. The heat, rain and lack of attention are really showing in every

single

garden.

This garden, in addition to looking bad is hindering the sight line at the corner.  I almost pulled out in front of a car this week.  Tsk, tsk.

Prince Charming led the way by trimming the bushes out front last week.

Before:

Don't be fooled by the abundance of gorgeous blooms.  This is a riot of vegetation under all that pretty which P.C. neatly trimmed back (once the flowers were done blooming!)

I know, not as "pretty" as the first photo.  But trust me, necessary.  This bed will look lovely again at the end of August into September when the roses burst into their second bloom.

So I've started this week tackling the beds....slowly....methodically....ugh!

But so much better!

Before

After.  I can walk to the composting bins now without brushing against plants.  and I can see the stone path P.C. laid a couple of years ago.

Before

After.  That yellow yarrow spilling out into the drive is one of those plants I love to hate.  I love it's bright yellow flowers next to the lavender.  And both do well in this tough spot next to the hot cement of the driveway.  Not an easy feat.  Plus the yarrow blooms most of the summer.  But frankly it's like having a badly behaving teenager living with you.

It flops exposing a hollow middle.  It's independent minded and aggressive in it's growth habits.

I cut it back to 1/3 it's original size and staked it.  But it's on the same kind of notice I gave my children when they turned 18.  Live by the house rules or you're out of here.

I've got all kinds of excuses for letting my gardens reach such a chaotic tumult.  I was traveling in May, the usual gardening month.  I've never lived in a house or had a garden as long as I've had this one.  It's seven years old now.  And it may that dogs and gardens age at the same rate, making this garden middle-aged.  Like me at middle age, the garden is spreading at the middle and getting a little loose and carefree with appearances.

There's also the good-time excuse. Once I returned home, there's been so much fun to have out of the garden.

We had the College Hill Art Festival

Swimming, tennis, bike riding, and kayaking

P.C. catching some sun

There has been Hello Dolly at the Oster Regent

Photo courtesy of Oster Regent

Cocktails to sip on the patio

Dinner parties on the porch

Community band concerts

It's a Charmed Life here with Prince Charming and so I can't grumble as I pull and stake and try to tame the jungle.

Oh and I almost forgot we have new neighbors and they just hatched!

While we were tripping around France, robins built a nest in one of the giant pots off our bedroom deck.  I've been keeping watch and giving them their space.  There were four eggs to start and it looks to me as though two hatched and made it this far.  They have feathers now, so I expect they'll soon be flying the nest.  Too bad they haven't offered to help weed.

Another charming distraction, David called to invite Annie and me over to see his gardens.  They are weed free and incredible!

Just look at his holly hocks!  Beautiful.  That's David on the left, Annie on the right.

Look at David's neat rows and his weed free garden!! More on David's gardens next week.  But Prince Charming says it's swimming time so gotta scoot....sure don't want to miss any of the fun of summer.

Hope your week has been full of summer fun too.  Take care marvelous readers until next week!

Just so you don't lose faith in me completely.  There is one garden that's looking fabulous!

Don't you just love the way those white "snowballs" on the hydrangea pop out of the shade?

Oh and one more thing before I ring off.  Here's a cocktail recipe perfect for hot, summer nights:

Equal parts: Gin (or vodka), pineapple and grapefruit juice.  Garnish with fresh mint and a slice of pineapple.  Though I have to admit I prefer mine with slightly more grapefruit than pineapple juice.  Play around with this recipe and let me know how you like it!

Cheers!

A Magic Carpet Ride to Bliss

What I wanted this week is what I want every week: a magic carpet ride to bliss.

The Universe wasn't having it this week.  It handed me the fragile beauty of these peonies.  Like me this week they were falling apart, disintegrating, past their prime.

And yet. Still. Lovely.

The week started out with the horrible tragedies in Orlando.  First the shooting of the singer, Christina Grimme. Followed close on the heels by the mass shooting at Pulse.  So many lives wrecked, ended, horribly altered. The two-year old Nebraska toddler snatched from his father by an alligator while on vacation.

A dear friend received staggeringly sad news that made all of us close to her weep and pray and hope for the best.

In all of this, there was no magic carpet ride to bliss.  Even though I pray every day and meditate and journal and pray some more and volunteer in the community and play with my friends and make my bed every day. In short, I do what we all do. I try to create order out of chaos, give each day some structure so there's something I can depend on.  And still it all goes to shit. I have more questions than answers like:

• Why can't someone else be sick?
• How can this happen?
• Why can't we all just get along?
• Why didn't someone step in and help or stop those people before they wrecked so many lives?
• Why weren't there signs?

Despite my best efforts I feel lost, confused, dazed. And yet I know that peace and love start in my own heart.  I'm angry with the shooters and with a Universe that can afflict those I love. I'm angry with politicians who can't seem to get their act together to get semi-automatic weapons off our streets and good, sustainable mental health care to those in crisis.

Yet in the asking I received an answer this week from the writings of Father Thomas Keating:

"God approaches us from many different perspectives: illness, misfortune, bankruptcy, divorce proceedings, rejection, inner trials. God has not promised to take away our trials, but to help us change our attitude toward them."

Sometimes there aren't answers that make any sense and I find I must live with the questions. Instead of demanding the Universe make sense to me, Father Keating's writings suggest that God is present in the confusion and disappointment.

Once when I was taking the disappointments of the Universe particularly personally, Prince Charming said to me, "Notice the birds singing, the sun shinning.  Yes this is hard, but there's still so much to be happy about."

In that moment I understood that I thought that if something bad happened I shouldn't, couldn't be happy. Prince Charming was telling me that even though the world is a bruising, brutal place; that isn't all there is.

This week there have been parades.

with marching bands

And old trucks

marching

and beauty queens waving

There has been wine with girlfriends

There has been gardening

This week, like every week, there has been falling apart and then putting ourselves back together again. We're not the same as were last week.  We are battered and bruised by the suffering. We are humbled by a chaotic and mean world that is still full of beauty, grace and love.  And so many of us across this country and around the world have said no to hate and yes to love.

Dear ones hold lightly to all that you hold dear and remember "We are God's work of art" (Ephesians 2:10).

Voila! or how to walk like a Frenchman

For years I've walked airport terminals looking at the departure board with longing  and wishing my ticket said Paris, instead of someplace like Bismarck (sorry Bismarck, you are a lovely place in your own right, but you're not Paris.)

Several weeks ago Prince Charming whisked me off for two and a half weeks of seeing

This!

We'd studied French for months online using Duolingo in preparation for our trip. But I had to go to France to learn the most charming phrases.  With every meal and without fail we were presented our dishes with a flourish and "Voila!"

When something went wrong, as inevitably happens on any trip, the French would shrug and say "C'est la vie." Such is life.  After several weeks of living with a more c'est la vie and voila! attitude, I've decided that's my one souvenir from France that creates the change that I hoped travel to a foreign land would work in my life.

Realizing that there is so much I can't control and yet remaining enthusiastic and optimistic about the unfolding of each day is worth so much more than any trinket I could have purchased.

Ah Paris, it was everything I hoped it would be and more.  Such charming men.

I know most people who travel to France rave about how beautifully dressed and thin the women are, and they are.  But my heart was captured by the French men.

So stylish and elegant, no?

Notre Dame was lovely and a long climb to the top.

The Louvre, the D'Orsay, the gardens all captivated me.  But I fell hard for the French men.

If you go to Paris before July 17th don't miss the Rousseau exhibit at the D'Orsay.

Such rich exotic paintings from a man who, like me, never got very far from home.

I'm ready to move to France, especially if I can live in the French countryside.  We also spent a week in Alsace in the walled village of Bergheim.

After the glitz, noise and activity of Paris, Bergheim was sweet relief.  I'm ready to move to this sweet little village of 1,800 souls.  They have a lovely  boulangerie, (bakery)

A sweet charcuterie with a most helpful butcher.  Hint the sausages are wonderful.  Sorry I got so caught up in trying to speak French and paying for our meat that I forgot to take a picture. They even have a small market.

They have nine, yes nine, restaurants in a village of 1800! We highly recommend Wistub du Sommelier.  And they have several wine tasting houses.  This area specializes in Riesling which I have to admit is not my favorite varietal, but that was before Bergheim.  The riesling they served is not so treacly. It is refreshing.

They have a lovely little library. Unfortunately it was closed for holiday while we were there.  Winding wine roads

Let you discover the country side on foot or by bike.

Want to join me in moving to Bergheim where they have wonderful food, great wine, books and oh did I mention French men!?

In Alsace I started to notice the French way to walk.

The one-handed arm grip.

The two handed grip.

This grip comes and in handy in all kinds of circumstances such as supervising the work of the repairman fixing your flat tire.

Prince Charming adopted the Frenchman's walk.

Is it any wonder I love him so? Here's the man who delivered me to France, took me to the top of the Eiffel Tower, walks like a Frenchman and whispers "ooh la la" in my ear?

Au revoir, dear readers, until next week! Wishing you bonne chance.