Restorative musings as we approach the winter solstice...

On a rainy and chilly December afternoon, thoughts turn inward as we move to nature's cycles.  I'm doing more time looking out into the winter garden than spending time out there, and that is to be expected.  Cozying up by the fire, mug of tea warming my hands, I am feeling the deep peace of a restorative yoga session just completed at The Yoga Center in Corvallis.  Each year around this time they hold these sessions and I was lucky enough to jump into an open spot for someone who couldn't attend at the last minute.  Once again, the experience was heightened by poetry readings from Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry and others.  This one came to us today.....

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me

and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. 

Peace and our place in the nature of things is a key theme of my thoughts lately.  And, as I begin the process of creating the woodland garden, this feel right.  A quote from Ann Lovejoy's "A Year Along the Garden Path" sums it up...."We make gardens not just to embody our dreams but because our spirits are uplifted each time we touch the earth."

And, I would add, to find peace in the grace of the world.

On borrowed landscapes...and Sydney Eddison

Where to begin with how this book touched me.....I savored every chapter and came away wishing that Sydney was my neighbor.....such inspiration....











One of the last chapters discusses borrowed landscapes and has given me great motivation to begin the woodland garden process in earnest this spring.  One of her quotes, "What the eye can see, the heart can possess". 

Just a short post, with more to come as the woodland garden gets underway.  Today, I bought 75 daffodil bulbs...hey, it's a start!

Looking for inspiration in deep December....

Just discovering Andy Goldsworthy, a English born artist, now living in Scotland, who works in large site specific sculptures and what is called "land art"....today I finished watching the mesmerizing documentary of his work,  "Rivers and Tides" and am now thinking of creating something in the garden that evokes the concept of portals....but, I haven't filled in any of the details, yet, and am making this post just as a memory jog.  Here's the link to the documentary online...Rivers and Tides.

The question is, how does he get such a deep black for the center of the portal?
What if you were to use a mirror to create the same effect?