Gardening — Page 2

Yesterday I wrote about being sad about the coming of Easter and how I would have to find a new way to create my own celebration. This morning I was talking to my dear friend Claudine in Belgium via Facebook Live in Messenger, so lovely to talk face to face with a dear one so far away. As we talked I was admiring Claudine’s “Easter Tree” made of a big vase of cut branches from which she has hung Easter eggs and little yellow chicks. It is so adorable. And hers is lit up too. She encouraged me to make one of my own and, with her encouragement, I did just that.

I went out into the yard with the pugs and cut branches from one of my overgrown loropetalum bushes. They were the only thing I had available to cut. Unfortunately they are not as strong as the branches Claudine used and they droop under the weight of the lights, in fact I had to use my green twisty garden wire to hold the lights to the branches and the branches to each other so they wouldn’t just fall completely over, but I was delighted with the bright pink lights, a gift from my dear friend Jim in November who gifted me with 2 boxes of pink lights because I have written about having pink lights here in my studio before the fire. Now I have pink twinkly lights in here again. And the lights have several different settings so they are twinkling up a storm, kind of twinkling up and down the branches in constant movement which just tickles me no end.

I don’t have any eggs to hang from it but I have to go to therapy tomorrow and now that my little Easter Tree is up and twinkling I’m wondering if I might just make a trip to the Dollar Store to get some plastic colored Easter eggs to hang from it? Or maybe I can find some colorful paper flowers to attach to the branches? Perhaps one day I can get some of those little birds from the craft store to attach to the branches? Maybe they will converse with the real birds that come to the feeders just outside the windows? My spirits have picked up just watching the pink lights twinkle. I would never have done this without Claudine’s encouragement, or without the pink lights from dear Jim. It reminds me of the Beatles song “I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends.” I do indeed, and there’s more.

After yesterday’s blog post several friends wrote to me in the comments to encourage me to at least start gardening in pots on the deck, to just start small. It is scary, and the deck is dirty and in sore need of painting, but I was encouraged to look past that and just begin. With the help and encouragement of these dear ones I will give it a go. And my dear friend Katya wrote…

“…draw a garden, paint one, an extravagant garden of every flower and butterfly and gnome or goddess figure. gees maitri. you are a painter. paint your garden! life imitates art. one day the garden you paint today will manifest in its own way in your landscape…”

It set me to thinking, to wondering if that could be possible. It scares me a little because as I’ve shared I am not “an artist,” I simply draw these wobbly, cattywompus Ladies of mine. I’ve never tried to draw or paint other things like gardens and such, but might it be possible? In my own wobbly, off-kilter sort of way? I think I’m going to try. I’m not sure if I will be brave enough to share it here but I just might. I will give it a go today and see what happens.

Today is a better day. I have been struggling but I’m alright. Just now I am looking out past the pink twinkly Easter Tree to so many birds coming and going at the feeders I am in awe. No, things are not as they were before the fire, but there is life here. I have to find my way to create a new kind of garden here, a few pots, a dream in my sketchbook, yes, this is how I will begin again.

Thank you dear friends, all of you, for being here with me, and sending me the notes and the gifts and the love. I feel you here with me. I will share this with you along the way…