Monday, December 7, 2015

7 Steps to a Beautiful Easy Landscape

Why, really, have a Garden?

"...understand that what you resolve will need to be resolved again. And again. You will come to know things that can only be known with the wisdom of age and the grace of years. Most of those things will have to do with forgiveness."

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"...a mistake for which you alone will pay."

The Sunday porch:enclos*ure, Delray FL 2, 1959, Library of Congress:
Pic, The Sunday porch:enclos*ure, Delray FL 2, 1959, Library of Congress

"Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Do the work. Keep the faith. Be true blue."

all the beauty things...:

Found on vestidoslindosatelier.tumblr.com
"You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else."

Courtyard garden:
Found on decoestilo12.blogspot.com
"Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you’ll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you’ll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room."
image: Found on cotedetexas.blogspot.com
"The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming."
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Pic via, The Little Hermitage.
.Topics, above, your garden will answer, absolve, comfort.  From, 
"Tiny Beautiful Things will endure as a piece of literary art,” Almond writes, “as will Cheryl’s other books (Torch and Wild), because they do the essential work of literary art: they make us more human than we were before.”
“But it’s a memoir with an agenda,” Steve Almond writes, “With great patience, and eloquence, (Sugar) assures her readers that within the chaos of our shame and disappointment and rage there is meaning, and within that meaning is the possibility of rescue.”
"Inexplicable sorrows await all of us. … Life isn’t some narcissistic game you play online. It all matters— every sin, every regret, every affliction."
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In a Garden, there is rescue.  How many decades, now, have I known to frame a life question/event, head into my Garden, let the question go, and come away with calm, and answers?  In my Garden, more often, free ranging thoughts arrive, unbidden, life's action steps.  "How did you know to do that?", "Well, I was in my Garden."
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If the essential work of literary art is to make us more human than we were before, Gardens are a book.  Gardening, in popular culture,  is a shovel, shredded car tire mulch dyed a redwood hue, mowing, swapping annuals 2 seasons/year, pouring chemicals.  In those gardens, who can hear?  In those gardens, chaos is fed.
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Curated these pics for you, I know each Garden is taking you in, welcoming, calming, inspiring, lightening the load.  A Garden Design course could be made from these few pictures.  Every topic a Garden imbues, is shot above.
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Have you already realized, in these pics, a Garden's mission statement & your 7 steps?
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7 Steps to a Beautiful Easy Landscape:
* A place to nap.
* A place to live your life between house/garden.  Terrace, deck, veranda...
* Framed views from inside your home, into the garden.  Vanishing threshold.
* Pockets of pure Nature, rusticities.
* Furniture in the Garden.  A place to share dinner/lunch with family/friends.
* Choose a Garden color trinity.  Green/brown/white is the classic, a proven friend.
* Interior style must flow into your exterior style.
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Garden & Be Well,   XO Tara
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Over lunch, in my Garden, in the Conservatory, I have heard stories, no woman shares, unless she's in a Garden confessional.  Great laughter, loud laughter, much laughter, mostly laughter and tears too.  The confessional safe, all have shared, exposed themselves.  Leaving the Conservatory is leaving the events of the stories lighter, yet the spent laughter grows heavier in joy as time passes.
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Thank you Farnum Street for inspiring today's post.

4 comments:

My Life of Domestic Bliss said...

I just experienced a beautiful exhale reading this ... we all need our sanctuaries. The older I get the more I learn about myself. Thanks for a very thought provoking post. Lisa

Penelope Bianchi said...

Lovely!!

Unknown said...

Your seven steps embody the way I feel about gardens, too - that they should be calming little retreats of beautiful nature. Unfortunately, I don't have a green thumb so I haven't had much of a garden in the past but I'm going to have one next year! I'm going to hire a landscaper and let them do it, but I love your ideas for the design, especially making sure that your garden views are little vignettes themselves and there are "pockets of pure Nature," as you put it. I'm going to try to draft a design that embraces that ideal. http://allseasonlandscapingny.com/landscape-and-design-installation.html

Thistle Cove Farm said...

one of my favorite posts; the photos are beautiful and as to easy landscape...just let the beautiful speak for itself. it's too much and too overwhelming for me to do otherwise.
Merry Christmas, Tara, to you and yours. Be happy, now and next year.