The “front yard” of our cabin is a space defined by poles, only there so that when the horses come in from pasture in the morning or go out at night, theyh don’t trample everything right around the cabin or rub against the cabin. Long horizontal poles are attached to shorter vertical poles, fitting well with the surroundings. This year, because it was spring and had been wet, there were plenty of flowers in our natural “garden”, many of them lupine. Purple and white was the major color scheme.
For your Monday soul…
“And lavender, whose spikes of azure bloom
shall be, ere-while, in arid bundles bound
to lurk admist the labours of her loom,
and crown her kerchiefs witl mickle rare perfume.”
William Shenstone The School Mistress 1742
Spring Sunshine
I position my chair in the sunlight streaming through the front window,
the rest of the house behind me
chill in its winter-to-spring transition.
The heat soaks into my grey fleece top
gradually seeping its welcome way through my skin,
into my bones and the center of my body.
Bushes bow slightly before the wind,
waiting to shed their winter bareness for the new growth of spring,
each bare, brown sword-branch tipped with green.
On the porch, a chipmunk overlooks the buttery daffodils and fragile narcissus
ever so slowly raising their rain-battered heads
from soaked obeisance into erect beauty.
Two goldfinches swoop down, perching in the largest bush,
tiny bird-lanterns heralding the start of another Saturday
as a cloud ship moves regally through the sky ocean.
The one had leaves of dark green that beneath were as shining silver, and from each of his countless flowers a dew of silver light was ever falling, and the earth beneath was dappled with the shadows of his fluttering leaves.
— J.R.R. Tolkien (more…)
“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”
―William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (more…)
It’s been hotter than usual and it’s been colder than usual and there’s less rain than usual, but all my usual garden suspects are heading from spring to summer with beauty and grace. (more…)
The house of my heart has:
• a library, where all my hundreds of books are on shelves so I can see them and easily access them without digging through boxes in the attic. The library has chairs that invite me to curl up and read, plenty of light (both artificial and natural), maybe even a window seat. It will probably have my laptop, a printer, etc…the technological minutia of today’s day-to-day living, a wonderful desk to store interesting pens, pencils and markers and gorgeous paper (plus stamps for things that still will be sent “regular” mail.)
• a porch. A big porch. A place with outdoor furniture where I can sit in the morning with my cup of tea, greet the day (or my neighbors or both), or listen to all the sounds that make up silence in the way that all colors make either white or black, depending if you add all colors of light (which will make white) or all colors of paint (which will make something approaching black.) A place where, if my house is near other people, I can see them, talk to them, invite them over, set food and drink out for them and get to know them.
• a clothesline. I want my clothes to smell like sunshine in the summer and my towels, sheets and pillowcases to invite noses into them. My dryer will appreciate the break. Not convinced of the fun of hanging things out in winter and breaking ice off them, though.
• large windows, suitably insulated, easy to open to welcome in the scents of summer, beautifully framed indoors by some sort of “window treatments” and on the outside, by real shutters that I can reach out and close at night, French-style. Provencal colors would be lovely for them. The sun will pour into the house on sunny days, into every room, nook and cranny.
• a large kitchen that’s the heart of the home, maybe a kitchen-dining room. Either way, I’ll be able to look outside while eating, gazing at the garden, trees, fruit trees and flowers. In the yard of my heart, there will be flowers to bring inside and food to eat. There might be chickens, both for eggs and for their ecological effect. There will also be a kitchen garden outside the patio doors, a patio with a grill, pots filled with herbs, chairs around a table, protected, when needed, by an umbrella.
• ceiling fans in all the rooms, solar panels, skylights, and a solarium as well as a green house. There’s a wood-burning stove that heats much of, or all of, the house. The gutters end in rain barrels and the garden has a drip system. In one corner, you’ll find the compost pile.
• green roofs. Or maybe not, since after having a flat roof with water problems for a time, I swore our next house would have roofs so steep the crampons would be needed to work on them. But green roofs intrigue me as do straw bale homes, adobe homes and homes built partly into a hill.
• if not a basement and attic, then plenty of storage space. A pantry and/or a cellar.
• a dog, probably a rescue pit bull, to act as official welcome-er.
Whatever it has, the house of my heart will be filled with love, friendship, a sense of peace and community, good food, two or three-hour meals with friends and family and the love of God. The house of my heart will be a home as well.
(Thank you for permission to use the lovely photo [on the right] of a Provencal home to Barbara van Zanten-Stolarski of Europa Photogenica, unique photo tours to unusual places, at www.europaphotogenica.com.)
This, that and the other thing 