With Roses, Like People:

 It was definitely love at first sight!

In the first moment that I saw her, Rosa ‘Francois Juranville’ shot a rose-thorned arrow through my heart, capturing both it and my imagination completely. Eight years of careful observation and appreciative encounters have done nothing to diminish that. What a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

Rosa 'Francois Juranville' grows lavishly along the front of the houseAs with most affairs of the heart, a crush may seem awesome at first blush, but true love takes time. One may need, after all, to see the object of one’s affection at a quarter past midnight in order to begin to truly understand its deeper nature. Doesn’t this botanic creature look marvelous within the cool/warm mix of porch light and moonlight? (Be sure to click on the image to see it larger.)

20060610_Waverly_394

One may also need to see one’s new ‘crush’ caged in by life’s circumstances, before really knowing whether it is merely a fair-weather rose or instead, a generous magician and true font of beauty.

20120528_DPP-66-3

When life’s inevitable rain squalls descend, no rose so finely featured could ever hope to disguise its true stamina and character. Gratefully, this one doesn’t need to.

20120605_DPP-9

Without question, some roses, just like some people are fussy and demanding, prone to pouting and never quite up to the stresses and struggles of the day at hand. Certainly, one may think it is love in that heady, first moment of meeting, but time often proves just how different initial appearances may seem from the true character of things which cannot help but reveal themselves over time.

When you think about the roses in your own garden and the people in your life, don’t some of them, a few perhaps, consistently enrich your world and prove themselves magical, again and again? If you’re lucky, the keepers will continue to enlarge your view of them even as you see them in stormy days and weighed down with bouts of sickness and hardship. Crushes inevitably fade, but true love grows, especially when both give generously, proving themselves worthy of another’s best affections.

…lessons gleaned and refined from time in the garden. Namasté.

20130523_DPP-19

 

Come Walk With Me…

An invitation to share a few favorite glimpses from a Bloedel Reserve walkabout last Friday.

20130405_DPP-98

For many avid garden lovers, 882615_4950495954928_252629905_othis weekend’s stunning, Premier Plant Sale would have been all the reason needed to head to The Bloedel Reserve. Not me. Not quite. The main reason I carved out time on an otherwise busy Friday to hop a ferry across the sound was to walk and sit, and kneel once again within those immense, lush, silent spaces that make up one of my favorite gardens, to attune my city-battered eyes and ears to a world that one can actually see and hear breathing, and to breathe with it. I went, first, for healing and wonder time in the garden and once again found my vision-hungry heart stretched and fed. There is big magic afoot on Bainbridge Island and it is always worth the effort to immerse oneself within it.

20130405_DPP-108

The air was cool and wet, pregnant with woodland smells and mist, and birdsong.

20130405_DPP-118

20130405_DPP-88

20130405_DPP-206

Along deep, shady pathways, wondrous things are happening. Tomorrow there will be different, wonderful things happening. This is exactly as it should be.

20130405_DPP-13620130405_DPP-147

20130405_DPP-225

20130405_DPP-244

Look around, maybe just over the crest of that grassy hill. Some important, much-needed lesson awaits you, awaits your discovery and affirmation. Are you game?20130405_DPP-175

20130408_DPP-29Yes, of course I brought plants home from the sale. Several of them as a matter of fact. But no matter how amazing these new garden members are (that’s one of them to the right), they were not my primary reason for visiting. For me, one of the great beauties of ‘Bloedel’ is this,   “…the best things that you could ever possibly hope to take home from this wondrous place are not for sale and cannot be bought. They are not reserved for the highest bidder, but are instead yours for the seeing, the hearing, the smelling, if only you will walk a bit, tarry a bit, and as always, if you’ll merely say, yes.”

Namasté, my friends.

40822_4947723565620_1275549013_n

 

Crawl, Don’t Walk

 A late-March, nose-to-the-ground wander through one gardener’s emerging shade garden.

20130322_DPP-41

It’s early yet, but already this winter-dormant garden is beginning to push upward and out, a transformation worthy of careful attention. You won’t see much if you’re standing, though. Not at this stage. No, for now the magic is close to the ground. If you were standing here in my garden with me I’d tell you, “Go on, risk it. Get down on your hands and knees. Let your elbows get a little wet. Belly up to my emerging shade wonderland, my friend.”

20130322_DPP-49

20130322_DPP-59

20130322_DPP-42

20130322_DPP-64

 

20130322_DPP-28

 

20130322_DPP-8

Soon enough these tender new shoots, these unfolding wonders will have knit themselves together into a lush, intricate, verdant quilt of life. You’ll be scarcely be able to see even the smallest patch of soil before long. And then, yes then it will make perfect sense to find some higher vantage point, a way to look down upon it all from above. For now though, I hope you can see why my humble shade garden seems best, viewed in tiny, bite-size vignettes . . . and from a crawl. (Click on the image below to see a much larger version.)

image001

Each of the photos in this blog post (with the exception of the one below), was captured with a Canon G-12 point and shoot camera, in much the way you see me below capturing what turned out to be the first shot in this blog post. This self-portrait was captured with my iPhone 5, the aid of a Joby GorillaPod and one of my favorite photo apps, Camera+.

ShadeGardenShooter1

 

 

COLORS WITHIN A SHADE OF GRAY

575023_4759065889296_1554831009_n

Meditations On A Quiet Winter Walk

(I share this more to remind myself than presume to inform anyone else…) 20130302_DPP20130302_DPP-21

20130302_DPP-3620130302_DPP-4220130302_DPP-4720130302_DPP-24

 

A walk, pregnant with moments of recognition,

whispered koans, repeated…

insights settling into awareness,

affirmations of invisible truths revealed…

Wonders seem even sweeter,

shared.

 

(The type I’ve used here is intentionally small, and with its curvaceous script flourishes, asks you to slow your eyes and look carefully, just as I needed to do when framing up each shot. You may click on any image individually to see a larger and more legible version…)

Namasté