Healing Elements

Sunshine summons me, and I find myself outside much more lately. The gardens give their splendid gifts of color and texture, saturate me with their emerald glow, give life a new dimension, and bathe me in serenity. It is what I need right now. My husband created these gardens from rocky soil which he had to work by hand, day after day for many months. My Mother's love of gardening is now his gift to enjoy. He creates magic with gloved hand, amended soil, correct light, and Mother Nature's blessings. Self-educated in this art, he has listened carefully along the way, has taught himself well, has paid attention in order to make the right decisions. It shows.

I will be having major surgery in 2 weeks. It is a bit complicated and scary, this 4 hour procedure I must undergo. When I come home from the hospital I will be recovering among these flowers and shrubs, sitting among these towering evergreens. I will be lounging in the sunlight on the courtyard, surrounded by roses and the exotic fragrance of sweet alyssum flowing from pots of red geraniums and white bacopa planted with deep purple petunias and light, airy lobelia, as blue as the sky. I will be looking out onto a landscape of magestic lilies, white and plum and mauve, at perennials cast across a canvas in hues that bleed together like watercolors, listening to the birds call and sing, and watching them splash in their garden baths. Their competitors at the feeder, the fuzzy squirrels, will entertain me hiding peanuts, even from themselves, and chasing neighborhood squirrels away. Windchimes make quiet music in the breezes here and will add more tranquility to these moments. Everything around me is conducive to healing and joy. My husband and his love, our gardens and their beauty, the wildlife and its mysteries, and nature's all consuming, exquisite magic. Just what the doctor will order.

In the coming weeks we will take some photos of the lilies which are just now beginning to open. Until then, please enjoy the photos we have of our May and early June gardens.

Thank you all in advance for your good wishes during my surgery and recovery. I need and appreciate all the support and healing energy sent my way. When I feel up to it I will post an update on Facebook for those of you who are there, and I will try to get some photos of the lilies posted here. Until later, good cheer to us all!

“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul.”

John Muir

Click on each photograph to enlarge for details. All photography shown is from of our private collection and may not be used in any manner without our written permission.