old friends, new insights

my best friends from LA came to visit me last week, and we were all blown away by the experience.  We've known each other for as much as 45 years, but still had stuff to share.  I like to think it is the garden that helped us along to sharing our experiences, thoughts, dreams and even nightmares...

It was the first time for both of them to come to my garden since I moved here.  We knew one another well in urban settings.  One friend has gardened almost as long as I have, the other wouldn't know a daffodil from a lily (that's pretty generous in description, but I love her for lots of other reasons).  I was especially enthralled by the reactions of the non-gardener.  Her closest experience with nature has been on hiking and biking treks, but not to touch, smell and relax in.  Her high energy lifestyle found its match in my hammock in the woodland.  She sighed, and the calm in her was palpable (after she had texted her husband and friends to let them know she had found nirvana).

why I garden

The longer I garden, the more I realize my hands in the dirt have kept me balanced my entire life.  Many of my friends at this point in my life garden also.  They, too, find stability in their lives, no matter how complicated or simple they may be.  I observe the world rushing by now, no longer in the headlong dash to the next station with the masses of humanity.  Planted in a space and time when I can ponder these things...where I've been, where I am, and where I'm likely to go.  This is about the marvelous web of connections to places, people, memories, all the sensations that I experience while out there in mon paradis.  It's about the journey...from one season to the next.