Nature Nurtures Me

I love my garden. I love how tiny seeds grow into spectacular shapes with splendid curves.

I eventually want to grow most of my family’s food.

Green beans perfect snack off the vine. Like healthy french fries. Ben loves them.

Yellow squash.

July is not pumpkin season but she is a beauty.

I can’t wait to see this beauty turn red. And I love that my veggies are organic and free!

The grace of nature

Bull’s eye beauty

Orange delight

Wild veggie garden

Flower garden wild and free

Bumblebee

Blue joy

Close up

Flower garden.

The wild vegetable garden

Tomatoe field.

Birdhouse beauty

Yellow you

Swoosh lillies

Red flurry

All photos are from garden and taken with cell phone. I have been lazy and have been blogging from my phone. But hot summer days induce laziness and lounging.

What are you growing in your garden? My corn totally bit the dust and it started so strong.

This is a photo when it looked healthy.

What is your favorite July flower or plant? Mine is the gardenia and Crepe Mrytal.

Crepe mrytal in front yard.
And I am happy to report my fernd are doing well. I have just been putting them on thr walkway during the afternoon rainstorms.

Hope you are staying cool in this heat.

Porch Front Property

I don’t want to move; it is just so beautiful here. I’m sitting on my porch relaxed, enjoying a cool summer breeze. I should get up. To write. To clean. To mow the lawn. To play with my son. To enjoy the company of my husband. But all I can do is sit on my porch waving my knees back and forth like an American flag prepared for parade.

I’m exhausted from gardening. I planted peppers: orange, red, and yellow in neat rows 12 inches apart. I scooped up earthly dirt fresh and wet from the deep rains of tropical storm Andrea.  Dirt is stuck underneath my fingernails and birds chirp keeping me company on my porch front property. Some days, lazy is the new black. The new green. The color of truth.

Honestly, I am sad too because I am preparing for my mother’s funeral six months after her death.

Her funeral was finally scheduled at Arlington Cemetary. My father is there, his ashes waiting for her. I have to bring her ashes to D.C. It will also be the first time I have seen my father’s ashes as they are on a shelf or something at Arlington.

My mother was cremated shortly after her death on Christmas Eve. But I am not completely sad. In a way I am at peace and ready to say goodbye. She taught me about the beauty of nature and gardening. She taught me to listen to myself and be selfish when necessary.

My son and husband working together, fixing the hose. They are inseparable these days.

Sometimes a mom and wife needs her own space and time to be alone. So I rest with my feet up on a wicker glass-top table filled with clay pots with ripe green geraniums about to bloom.

Not beach front but porch front which is good enough for me.

Newly planted petunias and blue and white pots.

Porch front

There is something very charming about geraniums in clay pots sitting idle on a summer day with a cool breeze.

I’m going to try to keep these ferns fresh. This is the window to the room where I write.

Aren’t ferns pretty?

I liked this view from Lowes. We bought pepper plants and ferns on sale yesterday.

This blue flower seemed to be dying but I thought it wad quite stunning in its final song.

First gladiola to bloom from bulb this summer in my garden. Red is such a powerful color in nature.

Photo from back steps.

I can hear my son and husband play inside the living room. Everything is at it should be. I’ll continue to sit and enjoy the view and noise of my two loves playing, overlapped by birds chirping and flowers singing.

Porch. You can see how easy it is to be lazy with a porch like this.

Have a great day. I hope you are being as lazy as me or doing what makes you happy.

March Muse

Ben picked camellias today on our walk. Camellias mean perfected loveliness. In the Victorian era, they were given when courting. Click here for list of different flower’s meanings in the Victorian era.

From The History and Language of Flowers

• CAMELLIA (PINK) – Longing
• CAMELLIA (RED) – You’re a flame in my heart
• CAMELLIA (WHITE) – Adoration, Perfection, Loveliness

Camilla — Youth and Beauty

I live in a house built in 1880. I guess that means I kind of live in the Victorian age.

Victorian Snow Fall

We also saw a bright red cardinal. It was interesting because I literally was just thinking about my mom. And the cardinal came out of nowhere. It was so red. We stared up at the tree, our necks craned. Then I reminded Ben that Bob the Builder was into birds too.

This is a link about the meaning of cardinals. The second paragraph is very interesting to me since my mother recently passed away.

Cardinal in tree

“Many spiritual people will tell you that a cardinal also represents death or afterlife. Reports from loved ones and hospice workers often state that a cardinal appears just before or after a death, or that a cardinal frequently visits or appears in dreams after the loss of a loved one. As a totem symbol, the cardinal symbolizes vitality. A balance of intuition, perseverance and strength, the cardinal is said to offer safe passage into the realm of personal power to realize one’s goals and dreams.” – wildlife.blurtit.com

My mother gave me this angel and her mother gave it to her.

“Many spiritual people will tell you that a cardinal also represents death or afterlife.”

“Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.” – Oscar Wilde

I spoke with someone I went to junior high with in Chicago today. He lives in my hometown, where I grew up (Wheaton). He is going to help me create a video for The Community Kitchen to help promote the book project. Anyway, he went to the elementary school where my mom worked and he remembered her. He remembered her red hair. Her beautiful flaming red hair as bright as the cardinal. I got all verklempt and couldn’t hold back the tears. It was strange being so vulnerable with someone I hadn’t seen or spoken with since junior high school.

My mom, Betty with her beautiful red hair and amazing smile

Those two moments today were beautiful, but sharp. Like an elegant stick — like the elegant stick that Ben grabbed as I tried to corral him away from the street as he walked in toddler wonder, curious about beauty with his two camellias he picked for his daddy. Perfected loveliness.
“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
― Anne Lamott

In memory of my mother, Elizabeth Miller.

Recommended reading: The Language of Flowers by Victoria Diffenbaugh

“It wasn’t as if the flowers themselves held within them the ability to bring an abstract definition into physical reality. Instead, it seemed that…expecting change, and the very belief in the possibility instigated a transformation.”
― Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Language of Flowers

Who do you miss and what makes you think of them?

Feel free to write a comment and/or add “In memory of…”