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What’s In a Name?

September 18, 2022 //
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Note: I’ve referenced a bunch of roses by name in this one, without adding pictures (in most cases) – it may be interesting to open a second tab and google them to see what they look like or to read more about them. 🙂 If you put the word “rose” in front of their names, you should get images that are the correct rose without a lot of b.s. (I didn’t feel right linking to point of sale pages on all these, as it might have given the appearance of an endorsement.) Ready?

In my garden, the roses (and some flowers) are selected with great care to fit a theme. The theme? Love. Passion. Romance. A story of lovers over time. So, a rose named “The Alchymist” (a Kordes cross of R. eglanteria and a climber named Golden Glow from 1956) lives in the garden representing my Traveling Partner (it makes sense if you know him). “Baby Love”, (Scrivens, 1992?) was a gift from my Traveling Partner when we moved in together and he started a wee garden for me out on our balcony – “baby love” is also one of his pet names for me. So sweet. 😀 This year, close to “The Alchymist”, I’ll be adding “Baltimore Belle” (Feast, 1843), a nod to my home state of Maryland and recollections of many happy visits to “Charm City” in younger years.

Over the years, roses have come and gone. My first roses were “inherited” when my then-spouse and I bought a little house in Texas. Later, my first “proper” rose garden started with a Jackson & Perkins collection, before I had discovered the robust lasting beauty of roses on their own roots.

As gardens came and went with various moves, only those roses that could survive well in containers stayed “in my garden” as it moved from place to place, but I knew what I wanted, and the vision lingered. I want a garden that wraps me in love. 🙂 So, the roses are selected with great care, right down to the names. “The Alchymist” and “Baby Love” are currently joined by “Nozomi” (“Pink Pearl”, Onodera, 1968 – the rose that has been with me longest), and “Easy on the Eyes” (Carruth, 2017 – my “youngest” rose), and “Sweet Chariot” (Moore, 1984 – one of the first miniatures I ever purchased). I had a few others suited to my theme at my last address, but they weren’t doing well, and I decided not to haul their fungi, pests, or health issues to the new address. Starting fresh seemed the wiser choice. Some I’ll for sure replace (I miss the lovely “X-rated”, “Irresistible” and “Ebb Tide”) others maybe not (many of which I suspect just weren’t a good choice for container life…). We’ll see.

Soon three new roses will arrive: “Baltimore Belle”, along with “Golden Opportunity” (Carruth, 2012?), and “All My Loving” (Fryer, 2011). Roses have more than beautiful forms and captivating scents – they have provenance, history, and stories to tell. Some of my fondest favorites achieved their place in my heart because of the stories they have to tell. R. gallica, for example? It’s the oldest known rose, ever, anywhere. Wow, right? What must this rose have seen of human kind and histories gardens? I often consider planting her, just because… “history“.

I have a two long-time favorites I may never plant into this garden. They’re huge. Truly grand in size, and both are very thorny, too. I don’t have the space without a lot of strict pruning two or three times a year. lol One is R. eglanteria. One of my fondest favorites (also called “sweet briar” rose) she smells of green apple, and has so many adorable “wild rose” type flowers in a cute pink color. I often think that the Sleeping Beauty’s thorn-bushes were likely a mix of wild blackberries and R. eglanteria. 🙂 It’s a whimsical notion that delights me. The other? “Sombreuil” (unknown breeder, 1880, and previously sold as “Colonial White” in the US) – a massive and impressive climbing rose with enormous saucer-sized white blooms that are exquisitely fragrant and temptingly numerous – she guards them fiercely with her plentiful nasty thorns. Every year that I owned her, my arms told that the tale of keeping her pruned back. lol Worth it, though, and I daydream of adding her to my garden for that heavenly tea rose scent. She really doesn’t “fit the theme”, though… but oh I do miss her so!

…I could add either or both, but I can’t do so without acknowledging the challenge involved in keeping them to a manageable size in this climate; I’ve experienced that first hand. They were genuinely too big for container gardening, and I knew that back in 1998, when I moved them from Fresno, California, to Portland, Oregon. Back then, I had a community garden plot in the big community garden on the campus of Reed College. So… I planted them in my community garden plot. Why not? Well, I’ll tell you why not – about 7 years later, the college decided to reclaim the space the garden occupied to build new dorms. Those two roses, by that time, were so insanely large I could not move them at all! The college “kept them”, and indeed they are growing in the locations they had been planted (at least that was the case last I saw). My R. eglanteria was easily half the width of my plot (about 5′ wide) and twice that high. “Sombreuil” was similarly wide, on the other side of the plot, and far taller, with long sweeping canes curving downward gently, extending her visual width, each cane weighed down heavily with those big blooms. I only have one “sensible” location for either (or both) of them here, and that would be just on the other side of the retaining wall, instead of those invasive non-native blackberries (although that would be replacing a non-native with non-natives…so…). Then I could just let them do their thing over the years, taking space and being lovely. Getting them planted there, though, would require many days of intense labor clearing out those fucking blackberries by hand. Worth it? Maybe not…?

Where was I going with this? Love. Gardening. Roses. There are definitely roses I’d like to add, but limited space and a thematic commitment shorten the list quite a bit. 😀 What do I have in mind, as of this one moment on this particular summer day?

Love at First Sight – I mean, yeah, our “origin story” has a real hint of that “love at first sight” kind of experience.

Ebb Tide – the tides come and go. Emotions, too. That, and my Traveling Partner is a Navy veteran – there aren’t many roses with nautically relevant names. lol

Bliss – because love can be so much bliss, for real. 😀

You’re the One – well, yeah, that’s how it has played out for both of us. This unexpected lasting commitment and affection for each other has been significant.

Crazy Love – also, yeah, we both bring the fucking crazy to this rollercoaster. LOL

Orange Honey – okay, so, not “on theme” but another rose that was one of my earliest choices for my first rose garden. I fell in love with the trailing habit, the sweet fragrance, and enjoyed my friendship with the breeder Ralph Moore. It’s just a rose worth having. 🙂

Cutie Pie – my partner is my best friend, my “prince charming”, and for sure a “cutie pie”, so this one makes sense to me. 😀

Realistically, I have doubts that I could fit another 10 roses to my wee garden, after the 5 I’ve already got, and the three that are on their way right now. LOL I could probably do 10-12 (total), though, without looking like a mad woman… So, as with so many things in life, it’s about selection. Choices made with care. It’s about sufficiency. “Enough”. It’s about overcoming a very human inclination to acquire and to accumulate. Greed is not a character trait I want to develop (quite the contrary, I practice sufficiency).

How best to narrow down my list of 10 to 3-4? Well, one way I do that kind of thing is to let circumstances call some of the shots; I go to the website that I’m shopping from, and narrow things down (see list above) based on what fits my theme and appeals to me… then, that is likely further limited by what is still in stock. LOL This is how I selected the three that are headed my way now! If I look at the website this morning at my wishlist of 10 roses above, just two of them are actually available. This is sometimes frustrating, but it also prevents my garden from being too structured by introducing a certain not-quite-randomness. It also slows me down quite a lot. I’ll just add the three I’ve ordered for the 2023 garden – next year I’ll be looking over the options available then.

In the meantime, I entertain myself thinking about gardening and roses and searching for just the right rose to add here or there… and wait for new roses to arrive to be planted. Each one is a new beginning all its own. 🙂 Roses and gardens make beautiful metaphors. 😀

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Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Summer, The Art of Being

How Does Your Garden Grow?

September 16, 2022 //
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I’m sipping coffee and thinking over my actual garden, while also entertaining the notion of the garden-as-metaphor. It’s a lovely summer morning. My Traveling Partner and his son are in the shop together, doing shop things. I’m in studio thinking about bulbs, roses, and garden paths. Nice start to the day.

This week I’ve been out in the garden more, now that the worst of the heat as abated (at least for now). First year in the lovely raised bed out front that my partner and I built (celebrating our anniversary, back in May). I love it… but my results were less than ideal.

  1. My melons all failed, mostly due to the neighbor’s cat using that side of my raised bed as a great new litter box. I think I’ve now successfully discouraged that bullshit. (Also, I’ve never had luck with melons ever, in the Pacific Northwest, but that could be due to being a fairly half-assed, kind of terrible gardener…?)
  2. My beans gave up a great little harvest. By great, I mean quite plentiful and tasty. By little, I mean just the one harvest.
  3. When it gets seriously hot, I am inclined to be absent from the garden when it needs my daily attention most. I gotta work on this!
  4. The container, grow bag, and hydroponic gardening are relatively high maintenance here in the this location, and a bit distant from anything like “convenient”. They are a poor fit to the gardener that I clearly am.
  5. I love fresh produce. I really like things that are “easy”. These ideas do not complement each other.
  6. My carrots, radishes, and daikon were awesome – until they bolted in the heat while I was sick, in July. I managed some further success by harvesting the resulting seeds. 😀
  7. My eggplants are doing super well, but they don’t have much fruit on them (see “heat” in item #3). The couple of fruits maturing on them now look like they will be excellent.
  8. I have a lot to learn.

I think that last item is my key takeaway; I have a lot to learn. Working in the raised bed is easier, for sure. Having the gardening all right out front is very convenient. No real excuse not to get the work done; I walk by the garden multiple times each day, and I think I need to rebuild old habits of deliberately visiting the garden each day, in the morning and in the evening, just walking, looking, and taking it all in. Being “present” in the garden requires me to be literally present in the garden. lol No surprise there.

In the heat of summer, I let the lawn die back rather than use the quantity of water to maintain it that it would require. It comes right back with the rain in autumn.

I spent the week tidying up the garden beds, and adding fresh compost before doing some fall planting. I find myself thinking over low-maintenance garden paths (reduces the amount of wasted space given over to lawn grass, too). I think about where the next raised bed could go, and what it might look like. I consider the question of whether to cover the raised bed to keep things going through colder months, and how best to do that without looking messy. I’m inclined to provide cover for winter… extend the growing season, and get a better start to the Spring growing season here in our chilly-Springs climate. There’s time to figure that out to ensure I also maintain a pleasant curb-appeal aesthetic (that matters to me).

I pause my writing to enjoy a break with my partner and step-son, then head out into the sunny garden to water and look over “next steps” – time to prune the roses, and there is some weeding to do. Probably a good time to sow more Russel’s Lupines in the bed under the kitchen window (I’ve apparently settled on lupines and nasturtiums for that one…).

Gardens are very much a “I get out of it what I put into it” sort of thing. The effort I make on things like weeding, watering, giving seedlings the very best start, and pest control, directly effect the outcome at harvest time. That’s just real. Being there, present and engaged, observing and aware, makes so much difference. I make a point of walking the perimeter of the garden and flower beds as I water. I look at weeds and reflect on pulling those out – but no amount of reflection or observation will change the number (or vigor) of the weeds in those beds. There are verbs involved. I’ve got to do the actual work required to get the result I most want. True in life and in gardening.

It’s time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Summer, The Art of Being

What If?

April 29, 2022 //
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I’m in a strange headspace this morning. It’s a long weekend. My anniversary with my Traveling Partner coming up. 11 years married. 🙂 Worth celebrating. Where would life have taken me if I had not taken this path? I don’t know, and never will know; it is the path I took, and the path I travel now. I’m okay with that.

The headlines in the news are pretty grim. Every day more terrible news about the war in Ukraine. Nearly as often some terrible family killing or murder-suicide or mass shooting or femicide or report of a child killing someone with a gun left too easily accessible is the story of the moment. If you’re reading the news in America, you’ve likely got a news feed filled with violence. It’s fairly shameful that this is who we are. (Oh sure, “not all Americans…”, but we vote, and we put the people in power who do nothing to make the changes we need to keep people safe and free. We each have a chance to do better.)

So, today I sip my coffee. I figure I’ll help out today by not killing anyone, by refraining from acts of violence against others, by embracing calm and contentment and making merry with my partner. I’ll treat passing strangers kindly and with courtesy. If I run an errand, I’ll drive gently and considerately, and I’ll refrain from flipping off stray asshats who drive like they own the fucking road and have nowhere to go other drivers. Choices. I’ll do better, myself. It’s a place to start.

The seedlings on my windowsill are doing well. Promising. New life. Fresh vegetables grown at home. 🙂 I’m excited to have “a real garden”, although admittedly I begin every gardening adventure with maximum enthusiasm and commitment and I acknowledge the variable outcomes. lol I think my own best previous gardens were the balcony garden I had in my first apartment with my Traveling Partner (herbs and roses, and later some wonderful tomatoes), and the garden I had in the garden at #59. That one was lovely – just steps away from my apartment, with water right there easily available. I grew tomatoes, carrots, and some salad greens, that I recall were delicious, but bolted quickly in the summer heat.

I rarely took pictures of my vegetable garden, and the few pictures I had were lost when #59 was burglarized (my laptop was stolen). So… here’s a squirrel visiting my container garden on the patio there.

I sip my coffee and think about my parent’s garden when I was growing up and still living at home. At the time, I felt like an involuntary laborer most weekends. The whole family would have breakfast, usually my Dad would cook. Then we’d all go out and work in the garden in the mid-morning, on weekend mornings. It was a lot of weeding, as I recall. As kids we didn’t do much of the heavy work, or planning. I had my own 4″x4″ square plot to call my own, too. I rather foolishly planted it in Jerusalem artichokes, which thrived beyond my wildest expectations, filling the bed and coming back year after year. lol Why was that a problem? No one in my family ate them. LOL There’s something to be learned there.

…There’s almost always something to be learned…

My Traveling Partner is making me a raised bed for our front yard. I’ve planned it modestly – a manageable size that I can count on myself to take care of. I’ve outlined an “L” shape that will “nest” within the edges of the flower beds, and give about a 30 inch (about 72 centimeters) walkway between the flower beds and the raised bed. I’m excited about it! It’s a very sunny spot, well-suited to growing food. The grow bags in the back are excellent for cooler weather vegetables and things that like a bit of shade during the heat of the day. I like having both. It’s not a lot of square footage in this new bed – just 20 sq ft, but I know I can manage that comfortably without help, and that matters. I get about 3 sq ft out of each grow bag (of the size I have), and the four of those give me another 12 sq ft of growing space. 32 sq ft doesn’t sound like a lot of garden, but it’s the most I’ve had since the 20 ft x 20 ft community garden plots I had back in the very early 00’s. I had two of those; they were completely beyond my ability to manage them, but I hung on to them year after year, puttering around and playing at gardening without much to show for it. I don’t think we ever actually ate any produce from my own garden there (it was mostly herbs, roses, and flowers). My greed overcame my ability. There’s something to be learned there.

So, this time, I am hoping I’ve found the right balance between ability and will, between sunshine and shade, between yearning and having, and even between vegetables and flowers. I’ve learned some things. I’m sure there’s more to learn. There almost always is.

I find myself thinking about my parents, their garden, and the things that motivated so many of their choices and practices. Their garden was not “just for fun” – they fed us from that garden. We often didn’t have a lot of cash resources, and were not “wealthy”. In fact, I’m fairly certain we were “poor” by many definitions of that word, but that garden fed us and it fed us well. It set my expectations of what vegetables taste like way too high to eat supermarket produce and be happy with that (it often tastes almost flavorless without a lot of seasonings). I miss those flavors! My parents were not “doomsday preppers” or serious survivalists, but my Dad had an interest in survival, bushcraft, and the practical details of life without “extras”. He hunted, and we ate game. I grew rabbits, and we ate those, too. We fished, and crabbed, and ate our catch. The house we lived in was in quite an ordinary residential neighborhood, crammed pretty close to other houses, but we explored the countryside through family visits elsewhere, and trips to see my Dad’s friends out in the rural areas of the state. Most of the backyard was garden. We had a complete set of the Foxfire books and I read them eagerly. There were often evening conversations at the dinner table (or in the kitchen or by the fireplace in the winter or outside while working on a project together) about “what if…?” – What if the power grid failed? What if we use up all the oil? What if there were a new ice age? What if there were a serious drought? What if there were a major food shortage? What would we do to live, survive, and thrive… if? We were encouraged to really consider it, and to develop useful skills.

I have my doubts that anyone is truly “self-sufficient”. We are interdependent, each of us contributing something to a larger whole. Family, community, workplace… it’s not just one person standing in a garden, selecting that perfect ripe tomato. Where did the seed come from? The garden tools – were those hand-crafted individually by that gardener? The water… what is the source? How much of what is being used in the garden has to be purchased elsewhere? I sip my coffee and think about self-sufficiency vs interdependence. I think about “what if”… and wonder what my own life might be like if I suddenly found myself without electricity. What if there was none to be had? (“Generators!” Sure, sure …and when the fuel runs out..?) I slide contentedly down this rabbit hole on a sunny morning, as a rather large gray cat makes his way along the fence beyond my window.

A stranger passing by, curious about what I’m up to on my side of the window.

I call out to my Traveling Partner to come look at the hefty visitor making his way along the fence so carefully. I haven’t seen this cat before. He moves on; he has things to do, clearly, and no time to waste on us.

Today I’ll finish cleaning up the aquarium and put it up for sale with all it’s parts. I’ve been slow to finish this project, less out of reluctance or sorrow than avoiding the effort involved. I’ve been working at it a bit at a time, but now the time has come to finish it off and get it gone, and reclaim that space for other purposes. Here, too, there’s something to be learned.

…There’s almost always more to learn. It’s time to begin again. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Parables, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Relationships, Roses, Spring, The Art of Being

Plant Something

April 10, 2022 //
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It’s definitely Spring. The earliest seeds are starting to pop – pea seedlings (bush peas) are making an appearance, and the pea plants (climbers) are looking around for something to climb. It’s an exciting season filled with growth and newness. It’s a good time to plant things… seeds… ideas…

Pea seedlings breaking through.

I’m having my second coffee with a friend this morning. Nice day for the drive. Serendipitous that I managed to overlook one wee otocinclus yesterday when I took the livestock from the aquarium and transported them to their new home. It gave me a specific reason to reach out to my friend and meet up for coffee; they have an aquarium and a suitable home for this one little oto, and are much closer than the distance I traveled yesterday.

I returned home from my errand yesterday feeling surprisingly light and free, and okay with my decision to empty the aquarium and sell the equipment. In fact, I felt so relaxed and contented with myself that I sat right down and did the taxes for the year. lol There’s no real connection between aquarium maintenance and annual tax filing activities, but I was willing to capitalize on the moment of additional motivation. 🙂

Yesterday was a good day. Today is shaping up to be similarly pleasant, so far. I make a few garden notes. My Traveling Partner checks in on my outing, and we talk about whether to make it a shared adventure, deciding to make the trip to a retailer of interest, together, on another day. My partner’s smile is warm, merry, and filled with love. It’s a good day for love.

It’s said that we reap what we sow. Makes sense. We become what we practice. What are you planting in the garden of your heart, this Spring? Maybe it’s time to consider a new crop?

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Categories Allegories, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Spring, The Art of Being

Spring

March 19, 2022 //
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It’s the last day of “winter”. It hasn’t felt much like winter for a handful of weeks, aside from an occasional frosty morning, and one brief cold snap with temperatures below freezing. Tomorrow? Spring.

The primroses know Spring has arrived.

The hardy primroses in the front flower bed are blooming. My impression when we moved in was that the trio of tidy clumps with their merry blossoms were (probably hastily) added as part of the sort of flurry of activity a homeowner does to prepare a house for sale. Chasing “curb appeal.” I like them fine. They’re not fancy. I’m not particularly attached to them. They do reliably make me smile when I pass, each time I leave or return home. That’s worth something. I don’t see myself pulling them out… probably just add more, other colors, shake it up a bit with some variety, or something of the sort. Certainly, I don’t hold my lack of passion for primroses against these durable show-offs; they are blooming quite generously, and this time of year, they’re really all I’ve got for flowers. The handful of tiny grape hyacinths here and there bashfully do their best, and I appreciate each of the wee flowers opening up as the days become sunnier. Over time, I hope to create a splendid cottage garden full of flowers, and scents, and things to take pictures of. For now? It’s primroses.

The roses in the garden know it’s Spring, too. There is more new growth every day, and already I regret not “taking a firm hand” with “Baby Love“; she is thriving (and then some), and was still blooming in December. (My failure to prune her was mostly to do with that. I was enjoying the rose being in bloom.) Now she’s a chaotic mess of last year’s foliage, this year’s tender new foliage just unfolding, and withered hips from the last flowers that bloomed. It tickles me to see this rose do so well; my Traveling Partner gave this rose to me, back in 2011, after we moved into an apartment together. It did well in a container, and has never let me down – almost always first and last to be in bloom. We’ve had a good decade together. (The rose, and also the partnership.)

Although I’d kept several roses going for (almost 3) decades in containers, when we moved from that last rental into our home, and I prepared to move the roses, I was caught unprepared for how many were doing so poorly that I had concerns about bringing disease or insects to the new location, which is very close to a natural forested area, with a creek running through it. When I got the closer look needed to move pots that had been in one place for a couple years, I was dismayed by their poor condition. Potbound. Roots rotting. Infested with ants. I hadn’t left myself enough time to deal with all of that. Most of them didn’t make the trip, and went, instead, to a rose-loving neighbor. “Sweet Chariot” and “Nozomi” made the trip – but they were both replacements for ones I’d had for many years, and were only a few years old. Another, “The Alchymist“, I bought thinking fondly of my Traveling Partner, not too very long ago. One rose in the garden was the first rose purchased specifically for this garden; “Easy on the Eyes“. No doubt there will be more, eventually, when I have a better idea where I might want them.

…Funny how much I enjoy roses. It was rather “accidental”. My first husband bought a little house in Texas when we were separated, to get me to come home. (Rather stupidly, that worked and I quickly regretted my life-threatening short-sightedness.) In the front of the house were some massive roses, overgrown, stiff, tall, and straight – they blocked the front window with enormous red blooms that were powerfully fragrant. “Chrysler Imperial“, “Olympiad“, and “Mister Lincoln” were so bold, so red, and so… rose-y…

I didn’t yet know what I didn’t know, and I pruned the roses back aggressively, without a second thought. I learned some things from that experience… like… wear long sleeves and garden gloves when tussling with thorny roses. Ouch. In the backyard of that house, along the back fence, the previous owner had planted quite a few small “shrubs” of some sort. They weren’t doing well, and I wasn’t sure what they even were. We mowed them down entirely, figuring that would make short work of them – and some weeks later, they came back stronger. Miniature roses. I learned then that roses are not hard to grow – they’re glorified sticker bushes. LOL I fell in love with the miniature roses. I undertook to learn more… and here I am. I grow roses.

I love roses. I don’t even mind the thorns. I like hybrid tea roses, and species roses. I like climbers and ramblers and minis. I love the many scents of rose that are each so different – and somehow reliably also very much rose smelling. I love the varieties of different sorts of blooms, and the many shades of green of the foliage of roses. Oh sure, some hybrids are so delicate that one may as well claim to be farming powdery mildew as stake a claim to growing the rose, but I confess; I “shovel prune” those and move on to a cultivar or species that will do well in my garden. It’s easier than arguing with powdery mildew, I promise you that. LOL

Why am I sharing this bit of myself with you, tonight? No particular reason, besides Spring. Tomorrow, I’ll spend some portion of the day in the garden, rain or shine. Tidying things up for later plantings. Assessing the damage left of winter. Making up my mind about which greens to plant in the vegetable garden, with the onions, garlic, shallots, and herbs that I know I’ll want for cooking. Carrots? I think I’d like to plant some carrots, too. Maybe some peas or green beans of some sort. Things for stir frying? Maybe so. The garden is where my thoughts are this evening, and that’s worth sharing (and enjoying) – if for no other reason than that my thoughts are not on warfare, or sorrow, or global conflict, or mired in the lingering recollection of some task to deal with at work or some spreadsheet I can’t stop thinking about. I’m more than content to have my mind in the garden. I’m even happy with that.

I’m working on doing a better job of taking care of the woman in the mirror. I’ve been a bit shit at that, lately, and I can do better. 🙂

So, here I sit. No coffee; it’s evening. After I finish this, I will retire and meditate, maybe read awhile, and maybe even sleep in tomorrow. It’s not a fancy way to enjoy an evening – but it’s enough, and I am okay right now. 🙂

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Categories Allegories, gardening, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, Roses, Spring, The Art of Being
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