Garden Reverie

Give me . . . a garden of beautiful flowers

where I can walk undisturbed.  ~Walt Whitman

I hope you will bear with me a bit more as I share these images with you?  This has been such a glorious late spring and early summer.  In my years of gardening, I have never seen such an exuberance, a lushness that is so bodacious and robust . . .

Gardens are hard work, no mistake.  As I get older, I love it more but my back and knees say otherwise.  I just hope I can keep up with this lust for life that is going on around me as this is often the only place I find a deep sense of contentment.

Flowers and plants, trees and shrubs demand nothing but a bit of care and water and sun.  They don't argue with you but gently remind you to pay attention, especially if something is not quite right.  They offer you wonderful smells -- the other morning as I took a walk I was surrounded by the smell of honeysuckle.  I was so engrossed in thinking of other things that it took me by surprise.  I looked around and there it was -- a huge climbing shrub of yellow and white honeysuckle, reaching up over the others, scaling a small tree.  The heat of the morning had wafted its perfume out along the walking paths -- how generous of it to offer this gift of heady scent!

I hope you enjoy these images -- I return to work next week; just enjoying a small "staycation" at home with my husband, puttering around with projects and such, trips to the beach and a few dinners out -- a quiet and  welcome respite.

 It is good to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark
so that all its shy presences may haunt you and
possess you in a reverie of suspended thought.  
~James Douglas, Down Shoe Lane