Thank you for sharing a window into your heart. I felt I was there with you in the garden, the grain of the warm wood fence catching slightly on my clothing, strong black tea and a squint into the sun.
Summer is in full bloom on the south east coast of NSW. It’s been a soft summer, good rain, easy growing & not too hot. I looked out my window this morning at my Zinnias so cheerful and brave, grown from seeds gifted by an extraordinary woman of the earth who died unexpectedly last year…much too young.
There are chooks (chickens) foraging just beyond my garden, under the big oak. The horses grazing in the paddock beyond. My three beautiful wild boys still asleep in their nests.
And so grateful for this quiet moment before they wake.
I keep my head and nose well out of “the news” to which I feel powerless, I focus on building the community and future I want in my life. That is where I have a voice and a vision….and now it’s time for tea and a snuggle with my youngest who has just come in bleary eyed and messy haired.
Keep going my sisters, we are the web, the mycelium and the mystery that will hold our people together.
I'm so glad to have had you with me in the garden Caroline, basking against the fence! And how thrilling it is to catch a waft of sunshine from the other hemisphere with you, just absolutely magical and beautiful. I'm imaging your zinnias, how poignant they are, and your chickens and horses and cubs asleep still in their nest. Thank you so much for this window into the warmth of your day, it's such a balm. Glad to have our mycelia touching, and thank you for that reminder, how in these simple deep ancient ways of love and presence with our families and gardens and lands, we hold life together xx
Oh I too needed your heart speak today. I read them while sipping my own strong tea and nursing the sadness and worry that found me this morning.
It's been one glorious week for me away from meta and the news. I knew I had to protect myself from the happenings south across the border in the US as they freshly unfolded. I had planned a soft rentry today (my slowcrafted work is still overly dependent on somewhat being there still. I aim shift that!)
Alas, the day filled instead with an urgent medical rescue for someone close to me.
I sobbed in my garden today. It's frozen under sheep wool waiting, much like yours, to sprout dye plants. Lupins, coreopsis, madder, with a few beds reserved for indigo when the time is right.
I've cried into my tea, my cat, my dear one's kitten we've taken in until they can return home, 2 sweaters and 1 coat, the shower, my pillow, and now again on my thumbs as I type.
I didn't return to the 70+ notifications waiting for me. I have no space nor desire for anyone's memes and unfortunately not space just yet for the world of hurts and anger my senses can feel in the collective air. Surely I'll join in the outrage soon enough.
In the thick today's intensities, I learned I'll need to quarantine now too, and so I'll hunker down a little more, keeping away from media longer still, sticking with substack instead - my new favourite. Ask a friend to leave me a litre of cream for the tea on my porch. Rest and recover myself with wishes for the same for all hurting hearts.
I'll raise a cuppa to you from the garden tomorrow. With a solid, "Well Done!" to your brother. How good to have a brother who loves you so ❤️
And though I don't for one second rejoice the the soreness you felt/feel, I do rejoice the tenderness you hold on this side of things, and your willingness to share it outward with our long distance invitations to sit with you, sharing our own moments of big small harsh beautiful bits of humanity. Thank you for allowing us to be witness and witnessed 🙏
I love that you’ve abandoned Meta, we have to take a stand where we can.
Your writing inspires me so much. Thank you.
I’m longing to plant a garden and will start a new medicine garden in March. I have to fence an area off or the deer will eat everything. My garden will be on Whidbey Island, the place I grew up but only get to visit part time because I live mainly in LA. I’ve been planning to to spend more and more time on the island as the years pass and the planet warms. I could have never imagined that my city would burn to the ground and all my ‘prepping’ would possibly be needed ahead of schedule. If there is a schedule at all.
Anyway, lovely joining you in your garden for tea with your bees. Many blessings, Tia 🥰
It's so lovely to get a glimpse of your garden Tia, on beautiful Whidbey island, surrounded by sea, that particular color of the sea up north... I'm so sorry that you are experiencing the total horror of the fires in LA right now, I'm sending much love and blessings on your island path xox
Thank you Sylvia. Happy I’ll be back on the island for the month of March. I’m fencing a space for a medicine garden and bringing up a beehive that I didn’t have room to set up at my home in LA.
I love your garden so much. It’s my dream to be on the island the whole growing season. 💗💗💗
~I needed your words this morning , in more ways than I can express. I'm also on Ohlone land, in Oakland, CA. The rising sun is casting a golden glow amongst some scattered clouds. I am looking up at one of the beautiful grandmother oak trees that embraces my home through the window.
The other day PG & E hacked some branches off of one of the elder Pine Trees in the area behind my house. I couldn't help but feel a deep anger and sadness--I'm reading Richard Power's The Overstory at the moment and it has profoundly impacted my relationship with and perception of trees. My first instinct was to run out and stop them. I tried to convince them to leave but I was powerless to the tree not being on land that I owned and the complexity of the fear of wildfire/the power of corporate interests to protect themselves from lawsuits. On one hand--unfortunately the reality of development, settlement and the energy grids we are apart takes precedence over the value of the living world ~ and the desire to protect people's homes and prevent fires (of course I would never want to inhibit that protection) is on the forefront of everyone's minds. It was just disheartening that the method to attempt to keep people safe and local environments from burning also comes at a cost. This cant be the only way!!
I know in the grand scheme of things this is such a small tidbit in comparison to so much happening in the world. It makes me think of how the ebbs and flows of the complexity of the systems we are apart of and how to be in relationship/community, how to be allies, how to stand for what we believe in amidst these times is a continual dance, a continual learning process.
The planting of all kinds of seeds ~ literal and metaphorical, is what grounds me. I hope to plant some medicinal herbs, beets, kale, radishes, and onions. Harvest mugwort in the late spring/early summer and continue to learn how to weave willow baskets from the sandbar willow I was grateful enough to harvest locally this past December.
serena, i so empathize with all of the waves of anger, grief, helplessness and overwhelm that you went through around that tree being hacked and cut. i've seen that happen a lot here in inverness too, some really serious clearing of bishop pine trees for fire by pg & e after the fires in santa rosa in 2017... and they didn't cut the trees with any kind of knowledge of tree cutting or growth, like the expert arborists out here can do. they just hacked, took the tops right off the trees and left these horrible standing stumps sometimes, and it was like a battlefield all along the road after, where they were clearing branches from around the power lines. obviously yes there is a need right now to protect from fire, but oh my god, there are such better ways we could be doing this, its so heartbreaking. so, i'm with you! and healed by hearing about your willow basket work, your sandbar willow communion, and all the vegetables you will be planting soon. xo
outside, a storm is forming and wind blows wild and strong. i live in the mountains of central portugal.
the fire is lit and the house is warm. i am sitting and knitting, waiting for my children to return from a week with their father. they will be here in a couple of hours and i can't wait to receive them back!
everywhere i look, there are furry friends, sleeping and dreaming in this wintry afternoon.
i can never say i am alone. there are five cats and three dogs. i see two now, embraced on the sheep's wool rug, on the sofa next to me. and two others doze with heads leaning together on the back of another sofa, above the radiator. i can hear one the dogs snoring on their bed in the next room.
lately, i have trying to rid my insides of the man that i welcomed into my home almost one year ago and, later, to my absolute surprise, found out to be someone completely different from what he appeared to be then.
hello inês, i can feel those winds gathering around your house, the lit fire and the knitting at hand. what a beautiful scene you've painted, it's nourishing to read about from afar. the piles of cats and dogs, the sweet warmth. I'm sending love to your process of cleansing your insides of someone who proved to be so different than what you thought-- this is such a powerful description, "rid my insides," visceral in just the right way. love gets in that deep, and intimacy. may all the strong herbs of your spirit and heart help the final cleansing! i'm with you sister, i sure know the feeling xo
Oooh Sylvia I loved being in your garden with you. Hearing of your deep loss, your brothers loyalty and all that is growing from there.
I feel like I got a glimpse into your world and I feel grateful of that.
How you make beauty from that pain.
Here I am in the height of summer. And unfortunately the gardens have gone wild save one. My agrimony is going strong. Mugwort has taken over the hillside and paddy melons ( tiny rainforest kangaroos) now live within her arms as well as goannas. A strange mix I would have thought but they happily coexist.
My heart is so full after welcoming my 19 year old daughter home from six months of travel. She was raised in the Australian bush and is a selkie at heart. Needing the ocean daily in the form of surfing.
It was my first time having her so far that when things went astray I was too far to physically help. Although I’m sure my heart stretch all the way to Portugal when she hurt her head.
So having her back to sit on the verandah and chat with tea and hear all her tales is like the most exquisite feeling that I’m not sure I’ve found a way to describe. I’m sure it’s written in my tears of relief somehow.
Thank you for the tea and time in your garden. How very brave to return to the garden where there was love of a bunny Hawthorn and a man. And hopefully in the process reclaiming parts of yourself lost. So sorry that you have had this heart ache. My garden is under snow here in New England. As to the dark times we are in. If I know anything in this short time on earth 68 years is during those dark times of political or divorce. I have found I need to look for those moments of joy in the everyday: be they the geese flying low and the sun reflecting off their underside and wings casting a golden color that I had never seen and I stood in awe thus releasing me from my dark feelings after election. Even in the mundane washing dishes and looking out window and seeing bluebirds eating the suet I have just lovely chopped for them to keep them safe in a cold night. Revisiting photos from this year of premature twin grandchildren strongly grasping my finger only hours old feeling such relief that they were strong. Trying to find those moments in the everyday from nature and family can nourish and sustain our hearts in such hard times.
Thank you for so warmly welcoming us into your winter garden, for offering good strong cups of tea and sharing your dear heart. As always your words are so timely and find a way to speak to so many personal and global things that I too feel in my own heart and that which rustles through my mind. And what a beautiful way to amend the soil of your garden by planting saffron bulbs in the place of such deep heartache. I imagine their tiny strong roots breaking up the hardened soil into soft loam where they are welcomed by joyful worms and the woven hands of the mycelium that have been there all along. Reminding me of a kind of grandmotherly embrace. I believe this is something we are really needing now: to plant love in the hardened places where pain and sorrow once stood, or still remains. Letting love take root once more and compost and mend and turn that which was once calcified into something lovingly soft and resilient, rich with possibility and hope again.
I’m finding strength and solace in the small everyday things, in the seemingly simple things which truly feel the most powerful, especially now. I am weaving the softest wool yarn on a little oak wood hand loom. I am sewing clothes with my friends weekly, sharing lots of tea and stories and full belly laughs and tears. I am rereading the stories and hymns of Inanna, which at this moment feels like I’m reading them for the first time. I am drinking tea with rose petals daily. I am sprinkling salt over my candle flames.
My garden is a bit overgrown at the moment and in need of some tending. But I enjoy the unkept mess of it - a little wildness in the midst of this city and a sanctuary for those small wild animals who come to visit. Yesterday I noticed the first shock of pink hyacinths pushing up through the decomposing fig leaves. The bare fig tree with its tightly wrapped little bud scales are beginning to grow plump. The old rosemary bush outside my kitchen window has just started to bloom with their tiny blue silky petals. The lemon tree continues to shower us with abundance and we can barely keep up with picking them, so we give armfuls to our friends and neighbors. The freesias my mother and I planted under the pomegranate tree, have sprouted up seemingly overnight. In the early morning, the towhees go about their business and later the sparrows, house finches and oak titmouses bustle and sing up in the high tree branches. I am pausing to listen more closely and stay out longer in the garden when the sun warms it up. I am only just beginning to learn the language of this place I call home.
Sending love to you, dear Sylvia, and to Runa and to your beautiful garden. xox
Wow, this one really hit me as someone who has gone through a divorce that feels like something akin to what you’ve described. Thank you for sharing your heart and pouring this proverbial cup of tea. Sipping with you and grateful for your words 🤍
This one hit close to my heart. Especially the personal story you shared which eerily resembles what I’m going through right now. Your words make me feel less alone in my grief and darkness and give me hope. Thank you. 🫂
hello ifrah, i'm so so glad these words made you feel less alone... yours make me feel less alone too, as do all the words of others who've shared their gardens and hearts here today. gosh, it helps so much, doesn't it. I'm sending you so much love to the grief you are walking through now, sending saffron bulbs to grow from it one day, and be little torches through the dark. xo
I so enjoyed our cup of tea together. At the moment, I have lovely green shoots of broad beans - the kale (planted last year) continues to grace my meals and I am slowly weeding and preparing for the soil for this year's vegetables, dye garden, herbs and wildflowers. The rose bushes are pruned and the rain continues here in London
thank you for this glimpse of your garden Michele, oh it's just lovely to think of those pruned rose bushes in rainy London! what a balm. Blessings on your roses, your dye garden, your herbs, your new shoots... it's so life-giving to read about all of these gardens xo
Oh I wanted to add ‘Jardin Secret’ by Annabelle Guetatra a beautiful mystical garden to my comment but I can’t seem to find a button. I found it in the literary journal ‘The winged moon’. As always after a rather lack lustre morning your words have revived and nourished me so much.
Thank you for sharing a window into your heart. I felt I was there with you in the garden, the grain of the warm wood fence catching slightly on my clothing, strong black tea and a squint into the sun.
Summer is in full bloom on the south east coast of NSW. It’s been a soft summer, good rain, easy growing & not too hot. I looked out my window this morning at my Zinnias so cheerful and brave, grown from seeds gifted by an extraordinary woman of the earth who died unexpectedly last year…much too young.
There are chooks (chickens) foraging just beyond my garden, under the big oak. The horses grazing in the paddock beyond. My three beautiful wild boys still asleep in their nests.
And so grateful for this quiet moment before they wake.
I keep my head and nose well out of “the news” to which I feel powerless, I focus on building the community and future I want in my life. That is where I have a voice and a vision….and now it’s time for tea and a snuggle with my youngest who has just come in bleary eyed and messy haired.
Keep going my sisters, we are the web, the mycelium and the mystery that will hold our people together.
X
I'm so glad to have had you with me in the garden Caroline, basking against the fence! And how thrilling it is to catch a waft of sunshine from the other hemisphere with you, just absolutely magical and beautiful. I'm imaging your zinnias, how poignant they are, and your chickens and horses and cubs asleep still in their nest. Thank you so much for this window into the warmth of your day, it's such a balm. Glad to have our mycelia touching, and thank you for that reminder, how in these simple deep ancient ways of love and presence with our families and gardens and lands, we hold life together xx
Oh I too needed your heart speak today. I read them while sipping my own strong tea and nursing the sadness and worry that found me this morning.
It's been one glorious week for me away from meta and the news. I knew I had to protect myself from the happenings south across the border in the US as they freshly unfolded. I had planned a soft rentry today (my slowcrafted work is still overly dependent on somewhat being there still. I aim shift that!)
Alas, the day filled instead with an urgent medical rescue for someone close to me.
I sobbed in my garden today. It's frozen under sheep wool waiting, much like yours, to sprout dye plants. Lupins, coreopsis, madder, with a few beds reserved for indigo when the time is right.
I've cried into my tea, my cat, my dear one's kitten we've taken in until they can return home, 2 sweaters and 1 coat, the shower, my pillow, and now again on my thumbs as I type.
I didn't return to the 70+ notifications waiting for me. I have no space nor desire for anyone's memes and unfortunately not space just yet for the world of hurts and anger my senses can feel in the collective air. Surely I'll join in the outrage soon enough.
In the thick today's intensities, I learned I'll need to quarantine now too, and so I'll hunker down a little more, keeping away from media longer still, sticking with substack instead - my new favourite. Ask a friend to leave me a litre of cream for the tea on my porch. Rest and recover myself with wishes for the same for all hurting hearts.
I'll raise a cuppa to you from the garden tomorrow. With a solid, "Well Done!" to your brother. How good to have a brother who loves you so ❤️
And though I don't for one second rejoice the the soreness you felt/feel, I do rejoice the tenderness you hold on this side of things, and your willingness to share it outward with our long distance invitations to sit with you, sharing our own moments of big small harsh beautiful bits of humanity. Thank you for allowing us to be witness and witnessed 🙏
I love that you’ve abandoned Meta, we have to take a stand where we can.
Your writing inspires me so much. Thank you.
I’m longing to plant a garden and will start a new medicine garden in March. I have to fence an area off or the deer will eat everything. My garden will be on Whidbey Island, the place I grew up but only get to visit part time because I live mainly in LA. I’ve been planning to to spend more and more time on the island as the years pass and the planet warms. I could have never imagined that my city would burn to the ground and all my ‘prepping’ would possibly be needed ahead of schedule. If there is a schedule at all.
Anyway, lovely joining you in your garden for tea with your bees. Many blessings, Tia 🥰
It's so lovely to get a glimpse of your garden Tia, on beautiful Whidbey island, surrounded by sea, that particular color of the sea up north... I'm so sorry that you are experiencing the total horror of the fires in LA right now, I'm sending much love and blessings on your island path xox
Thank you Sylvia. Happy I’ll be back on the island for the month of March. I’m fencing a space for a medicine garden and bringing up a beehive that I didn’t have room to set up at my home in LA.
I love your garden so much. It’s my dream to be on the island the whole growing season. 💗💗💗
So beautifully said💚
~I needed your words this morning , in more ways than I can express. I'm also on Ohlone land, in Oakland, CA. The rising sun is casting a golden glow amongst some scattered clouds. I am looking up at one of the beautiful grandmother oak trees that embraces my home through the window.
The other day PG & E hacked some branches off of one of the elder Pine Trees in the area behind my house. I couldn't help but feel a deep anger and sadness--I'm reading Richard Power's The Overstory at the moment and it has profoundly impacted my relationship with and perception of trees. My first instinct was to run out and stop them. I tried to convince them to leave but I was powerless to the tree not being on land that I owned and the complexity of the fear of wildfire/the power of corporate interests to protect themselves from lawsuits. On one hand--unfortunately the reality of development, settlement and the energy grids we are apart takes precedence over the value of the living world ~ and the desire to protect people's homes and prevent fires (of course I would never want to inhibit that protection) is on the forefront of everyone's minds. It was just disheartening that the method to attempt to keep people safe and local environments from burning also comes at a cost. This cant be the only way!!
I know in the grand scheme of things this is such a small tidbit in comparison to so much happening in the world. It makes me think of how the ebbs and flows of the complexity of the systems we are apart of and how to be in relationship/community, how to be allies, how to stand for what we believe in amidst these times is a continual dance, a continual learning process.
The planting of all kinds of seeds ~ literal and metaphorical, is what grounds me. I hope to plant some medicinal herbs, beets, kale, radishes, and onions. Harvest mugwort in the late spring/early summer and continue to learn how to weave willow baskets from the sandbar willow I was grateful enough to harvest locally this past December.
Sending love and gratitude <3
serena, i so empathize with all of the waves of anger, grief, helplessness and overwhelm that you went through around that tree being hacked and cut. i've seen that happen a lot here in inverness too, some really serious clearing of bishop pine trees for fire by pg & e after the fires in santa rosa in 2017... and they didn't cut the trees with any kind of knowledge of tree cutting or growth, like the expert arborists out here can do. they just hacked, took the tops right off the trees and left these horrible standing stumps sometimes, and it was like a battlefield all along the road after, where they were clearing branches from around the power lines. obviously yes there is a need right now to protect from fire, but oh my god, there are such better ways we could be doing this, its so heartbreaking. so, i'm with you! and healed by hearing about your willow basket work, your sandbar willow communion, and all the vegetables you will be planting soon. xo
dear sylvia,
your words always find a direct way to my heart!
outside, a storm is forming and wind blows wild and strong. i live in the mountains of central portugal.
the fire is lit and the house is warm. i am sitting and knitting, waiting for my children to return from a week with their father. they will be here in a couple of hours and i can't wait to receive them back!
everywhere i look, there are furry friends, sleeping and dreaming in this wintry afternoon.
i can never say i am alone. there are five cats and three dogs. i see two now, embraced on the sheep's wool rug, on the sofa next to me. and two others doze with heads leaning together on the back of another sofa, above the radiator. i can hear one the dogs snoring on their bed in the next room.
lately, i have trying to rid my insides of the man that i welcomed into my home almost one year ago and, later, to my absolute surprise, found out to be someone completely different from what he appeared to be then.
i grieve and give thanks.
much love and a strong hug your way,
inês
hello inês, i can feel those winds gathering around your house, the lit fire and the knitting at hand. what a beautiful scene you've painted, it's nourishing to read about from afar. the piles of cats and dogs, the sweet warmth. I'm sending love to your process of cleansing your insides of someone who proved to be so different than what you thought-- this is such a powerful description, "rid my insides," visceral in just the right way. love gets in that deep, and intimacy. may all the strong herbs of your spirit and heart help the final cleansing! i'm with you sister, i sure know the feeling xo
Oooh Sylvia I loved being in your garden with you. Hearing of your deep loss, your brothers loyalty and all that is growing from there.
I feel like I got a glimpse into your world and I feel grateful of that.
How you make beauty from that pain.
Here I am in the height of summer. And unfortunately the gardens have gone wild save one. My agrimony is going strong. Mugwort has taken over the hillside and paddy melons ( tiny rainforest kangaroos) now live within her arms as well as goannas. A strange mix I would have thought but they happily coexist.
My heart is so full after welcoming my 19 year old daughter home from six months of travel. She was raised in the Australian bush and is a selkie at heart. Needing the ocean daily in the form of surfing.
It was my first time having her so far that when things went astray I was too far to physically help. Although I’m sure my heart stretch all the way to Portugal when she hurt her head.
So having her back to sit on the verandah and chat with tea and hear all her tales is like the most exquisite feeling that I’m not sure I’ve found a way to describe. I’m sure it’s written in my tears of relief somehow.
Thank you for the tea and time in your garden. How very brave to return to the garden where there was love of a bunny Hawthorn and a man. And hopefully in the process reclaiming parts of yourself lost. So sorry that you have had this heart ache. My garden is under snow here in New England. As to the dark times we are in. If I know anything in this short time on earth 68 years is during those dark times of political or divorce. I have found I need to look for those moments of joy in the everyday: be they the geese flying low and the sun reflecting off their underside and wings casting a golden color that I had never seen and I stood in awe thus releasing me from my dark feelings after election. Even in the mundane washing dishes and looking out window and seeing bluebirds eating the suet I have just lovely chopped for them to keep them safe in a cold night. Revisiting photos from this year of premature twin grandchildren strongly grasping my finger only hours old feeling such relief that they were strong. Trying to find those moments in the everyday from nature and family can nourish and sustain our hearts in such hard times.
Beautiful. Thank you for sharing bits of your heart and your life with us.
Thank you for so warmly welcoming us into your winter garden, for offering good strong cups of tea and sharing your dear heart. As always your words are so timely and find a way to speak to so many personal and global things that I too feel in my own heart and that which rustles through my mind. And what a beautiful way to amend the soil of your garden by planting saffron bulbs in the place of such deep heartache. I imagine their tiny strong roots breaking up the hardened soil into soft loam where they are welcomed by joyful worms and the woven hands of the mycelium that have been there all along. Reminding me of a kind of grandmotherly embrace. I believe this is something we are really needing now: to plant love in the hardened places where pain and sorrow once stood, or still remains. Letting love take root once more and compost and mend and turn that which was once calcified into something lovingly soft and resilient, rich with possibility and hope again.
I’m finding strength and solace in the small everyday things, in the seemingly simple things which truly feel the most powerful, especially now. I am weaving the softest wool yarn on a little oak wood hand loom. I am sewing clothes with my friends weekly, sharing lots of tea and stories and full belly laughs and tears. I am rereading the stories and hymns of Inanna, which at this moment feels like I’m reading them for the first time. I am drinking tea with rose petals daily. I am sprinkling salt over my candle flames.
My garden is a bit overgrown at the moment and in need of some tending. But I enjoy the unkept mess of it - a little wildness in the midst of this city and a sanctuary for those small wild animals who come to visit. Yesterday I noticed the first shock of pink hyacinths pushing up through the decomposing fig leaves. The bare fig tree with its tightly wrapped little bud scales are beginning to grow plump. The old rosemary bush outside my kitchen window has just started to bloom with their tiny blue silky petals. The lemon tree continues to shower us with abundance and we can barely keep up with picking them, so we give armfuls to our friends and neighbors. The freesias my mother and I planted under the pomegranate tree, have sprouted up seemingly overnight. In the early morning, the towhees go about their business and later the sparrows, house finches and oak titmouses bustle and sing up in the high tree branches. I am pausing to listen more closely and stay out longer in the garden when the sun warms it up. I am only just beginning to learn the language of this place I call home.
Sending love to you, dear Sylvia, and to Runa and to your beautiful garden. xox
Wow, this one really hit me as someone who has gone through a divorce that feels like something akin to what you’ve described. Thank you for sharing your heart and pouring this proverbial cup of tea. Sipping with you and grateful for your words 🤍
Gotta love an Aries 😂 we’re all gonna need some of that fire this year 🔥
I’m planning to start my very first garden ever this spring and love the saffron suggestion.
Dear Sylvia,
This one hit close to my heart. Especially the personal story you shared which eerily resembles what I’m going through right now. Your words make me feel less alone in my grief and darkness and give me hope. Thank you. 🫂
hello ifrah, i'm so so glad these words made you feel less alone... yours make me feel less alone too, as do all the words of others who've shared their gardens and hearts here today. gosh, it helps so much, doesn't it. I'm sending you so much love to the grief you are walking through now, sending saffron bulbs to grow from it one day, and be little torches through the dark. xo
I so enjoyed our cup of tea together. At the moment, I have lovely green shoots of broad beans - the kale (planted last year) continues to grace my meals and I am slowly weeding and preparing for the soil for this year's vegetables, dye garden, herbs and wildflowers. The rose bushes are pruned and the rain continues here in London
thank you for this glimpse of your garden Michele, oh it's just lovely to think of those pruned rose bushes in rainy London! what a balm. Blessings on your roses, your dye garden, your herbs, your new shoots... it's so life-giving to read about all of these gardens xo
Oh I wanted to add ‘Jardin Secret’ by Annabelle Guetatra a beautiful mystical garden to my comment but I can’t seem to find a button. I found it in the literary journal ‘The winged moon’. As always after a rather lack lustre morning your words have revived and nourished me so much.
mirabella i think your original comment may have vanished! i'm not seeing it here and this add-on is so beautiful and evocative-- this painting? https://galleryviewer.com/en/artwork/53651/jardin-secret-16
Goodness my love that is a lot. I see a Hawthorn tree growing from where the hutch once was.