Tag Archives: garden

Today is a Day

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“I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep today.”

I looked up to see a resting-for-just-a-minute hummingbird as he perched in the bottlebrush tree. This time I was able to quickly snap a photo before he took off. At some point, we all need stillness.

Credit to Enchanted Seashells

Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

Today by Mary Oliver

Photo Scrapbook

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I spent a frustrating couple of hours attempting to install new, adhesive shelf liners in the kitchen and bathroom. If you’ve ever done the same, frustrating doesn’t even describe the feeling of trying to smoothly stick the paper without bumps, lumps, or having it fold over and stick to itself. I did a HORRIBLE job, gave up, admitted defeat, and put all the items back under the bathroom and kitchen sinks to cover up the mistakes. I hate to fail at a task, but this was a fight I couldn’t win. That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back, that’s for sure.

After a much needed break with a mug of lovely ginger tea, I reviewed some of my favorite photos snapped in the last few days:

Another photo I sent to the original Angel Boy to make him miss SoCal surfing and come down for a visit!

While I was looking at the surf, a bunny behind bars came to visit.

I was enchanted by pretty cactus flowers all in a row.

My mulberry tree is going crazy this year. In the past, I’ve harvested and made jam and frozen quarts and quarts of them for cobblers and to sweeten smoothies, but I’m not taking on that burden this year. That leaves more for the birds and the RATS. Eww.

A Shasta Daisy and The Fibonacci Sequence

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Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine for the soul.” – Luther Burbank

With no rain in sight, my plants are becoming thirsty and I have to water them so they don’t dry out. I stopped for a minute to contemplate the droplets on a perfectly perfect Shasta daisy.

Nature is amazing. Everything is related to everything. Nothing is simply what it seems.

Many flowers exhibit a petal count that corresponds to Fibonacci numbers. Shasta daisies have twenty-one. This is something I didn’t even know about until recently. If they taught it in school, it’s another one of those days when I wasn’t paying attention.

In the 13th century an Italian mathematician, Leonardo de Pisa, better known today as Fibonacci, published a book called Liber Abaci. He introduced a number sequence that became known as the Fibonacci sequence. Starting with 0 and 1, each new number in the sequence is the sum of the two before it.  0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377.

The golden mean or the golden ratio is a special number found by dividing a line into two parts.

The golden mean and the Fibonacci spiral are connected to life, even spiritual life. They can be found in nature in the number of petals of flowers, the way the tiniest stem
unfurls, in spirals in seashells, and more. 

The golden proportion of 1.618 is found in key proportions of the body in humans, animals, insects, and in DNA. Our perceptions of beauty support that phi is a factor in what we find attractive.https://energeticgeometry.com/

That’s a pretty weighty concept for my brain to absorb or even understand. The possibilities seem endless, one more mystery of the universe.

I’m an uncomplicated person. All I know for sure is that I love the way Shasta daisies spread to fill in the empty spaces like they fill my heart and make me happy.

“Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.” – Theodore Roethke.

Stargazing

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After being subjected to the real world for a while by the trial and guilty verdict of an ex-President — as I shake my head and wonder how ANYONE could have voted for that narcissistic orange blowhard, it’s time to recover with the simple, joyful, garden beauty of a Stargazer Lily — like a palate cleanser, but instead for my brain.

I’m super allergic to the alluring fragrance of most cut flowers in a vase, but I can enjoy them in the garden without sneezing. Stargazers return every year; this is the first bloom to fully open, but you can see all the others waiting their turn.

Scott’s Oriole

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In one of my favorite photos, my resident family of Scott’s Orioles rarely stay in one place long enough to take a pic that’s not blurry, but I got lucky this time. This guy impatiently waits for the grapes to ripen.

Photo by Enchanted Seashells

The Dragonfly

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Art + Poetry, two of my faves to join together.

Ida Rentoul Outhwaite 
The Dragon-Fly 

Today I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.
An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.
He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew. 
--- Alfred Lord Tennyson

Before bats, before birds, before pterosaurs, a dragonfly-like insect was probably the first thing to fly on Earth. Dragonflies are the strongest flyers in the insect world—reaching speeds of up to 30 mph and among the few animals that can hover. (PBS)

Dragonflies undergo “incomplete metamorphosis” which means that they don’t go through a pupal phase like a butterfly. A dragonfly nymph hatches from an egg looking somewhat like a tiny adult, but without wings. The nymphs go through a series of molts, shedding their skin. Each of these molts is called an instar. The nymph comes “from the wells where he did lie” in the final instar before becoming an adult, or imago.

The nymph must shed its exoskeleton to reveal a new, winged body. A split forms dorsally on the thorax just above the wing pads and somehow the imago must pump fluid into the wings so they will expand and harden.

Nature is AMAZING.

May’s Full Flower Moon

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The Flower Moon reminds us that the most beautiful blossoms have deep roots — as this lunation is receiving a motivating push from subterranean planet Pluto, which could catalyze some deep emotional excavation. 

To honor this beautiful full moon, which the Lakota call “Moon Of The Green Leaves”, here are some of my favorite flower photos…

All photos by Enchanted Seashells

(Some content curated from Bustle)

Dogwood and Lilac

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“Come spring, in the shaded forests near my home
Blooms the elegant and lovely dogwood tree…” — Shakespeare

“In another world and another day.
Moonlight turns the purple lilacs blue...” — Conrad Aiken

These are two of my favorite flowers. I really wish they thrived in Southern California, but sadly, they don’t. I have to see them in photos from the Pacific Northwest and try to recollect the alluring fragrance.

The Lilac Fairy, Cicely Mary Barker

darkness

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“If everything around seems dark,
look again, you may be the light.”
Rumi

Credit Enchanted Seashells

Sometimes all we need is the perfectly petite flower of a fragrant geranium to change darkness to light; sadness to joy — and sometimes WE are the light.

Today is World Naked Gardening Day!

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The first Saturday in May is World Naked Gardening Day.

We’re encouraged to wear NOTHING but a sunhat and sunscreen, to pick up a trowel or a rake, and seed and weed au naturale.

Why garden naked? Our culture needs to move toward a healthy sense of both body acceptance and our relation to the natural environment. Gardening naked is not only a simple joy, it reminds us–even if only for those few sunkissed minutes–that we can be honest with who we are as humans and as part of this planet. and that’s also a definitely NOT ME, whether it’s “world wide” or “worldwide”! Curated from https://naturisteducation.org/wngd/

Today, you’ll find me in the garden, fully clothed, planting peas and beans and mixed leafy greens.

However, if YOU choose to celebrate in your birthday suit, DO NOT send pics!

Enjoy!