Plant Whatever Brings You Joy

tulip tree

This humble little town is awash in a blaze of blossoms, I swear. And frankly I would be remiss if I did not capture their blessed imagery and share with you, as it won’t last. There are not one but two magnificent tulip trees, as the locals call them, out in front of the local courthouse, formally known as magnolia soulangiana. Don’t you just love it? I see the words “soul” and something with an etymology similar to “angel” in there and it’s not a stretch to sit or stand beneath these breathtakingly beautiful trees and ponder a Soul Angel, let me tell you. I nearly took a ladder down there to really get myself inside their faces, but it escaped me and I accepted that this was, indeed, the human view of a tulip tree. I’m not a bird. And there is nothing shabby about looking from the bottom side up. Not at all. What a blessing.

tuliptreebranch

Meanwhile, back at home, this quince bush is outshining everything else in the garden at the moment, like some mystical burning bush of glory brightening the far back corner. It devours balls tossed for the doggies, so they are forever sorting through the thorny branches to retrieve them, fortunately none the worse for wear.

quince

If you have not been thoroughly saturated with color, take a gander at these camelias who have now joined the ranks of the ones I shot last week:

red camelias

pink camelias

A closer look:

single pink camelia

Can you imagine what it’s like around here at the moment? It’s affecting everyone who lives here. You can feel it. We are soaking it up like hungry piglets, reveling in it, engaged in a visual feast of vibrant color and exquisitely delicate shape and form.

Moving among all these flowers this week I kept thinking about what Eckhart Tolle talked about at the beginning of The New Earth, especially as I did listen to his first workshop with Oprah. [There are 500,000 folks participating from 139 countries simultaneously!! It is not too late to sign up. Just go to oprah.com and register. It’s free and it’s amazing, and you can watch the one you missed.] Eckhart suggests we go into nature and totally and conscientiously reframe from naming anything. Forget the names. Just be with what you find around you. Oprah, a true urbanite at this stage of her life (wouldn’t you think?) told him she tried it out. She said she loves trees, particularly the oak trees on her property in California. So heeding his suggestion, she went out onto her property and made a point not to name anything around her, but to simply be with what was around her, and that, indeed, she felt an internal shift, an energizing she had never experienced before. Honestly, as a Pisces I think I’m already less inclined to name plants I’m communing with. But I can see how naming begins the process of separation. (And you can extrapolate ad infinitum on this one.) Just something to think about next time you are out in your gardens. A little experiment. Please let me know if anything interesting shows up for you…

Born with the moon in Cancer
Choose her a name she will answer to
Call her green and the winters cannot fade her
Call her green for the children who have made her
Little green, be a gypsy dancer

Just a little green
Like the color when the spring is born
There’ll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow

—Joni Mitchell

(Did you click on Joni??? :))

‘Till soon…
Blessings,
Kathryn

Posted on March 8th, 2008 by Kathryn
Filed under: Plants | 34 Comments »

The Camellias Are Here!!!

blush camelia

I was nearly swooning when I brought my first bouquet indoors from the above camellia tree. My home is graced by not one, but two, of the above variety which are currently in full bloom, each standing at least ten feet tall! Half the front of the house is covered with these delicious blush blossoms, that fall somewhere between pale peach and pink. It is a splendor, my dears. Exquisite is the closest word. Yet even I was somewhat puzzled by the enormous impact these particular flowers had upon me once I had put three or four burgeoning blossoms in a lovely vase and placed them next to the bathroom sink. Was it the color? Was it that winter had had its effect and my soul just longed for spring, was filled up with the sheer delight of a freshly cut bouquet? Or what? Maybe a bit of both, I surmised. And then I picked up the book Oprah has chosen for her new free international workshop (which begins online Monday evening, btw), Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth. And I was deeply moved to discover he opens the book with an “evocation” that begins with a treatise on flowers. He suggests that a single flower triggers in us a memory of our own most inner beauty, our true nature, a faint whisper, perhaps, of that which we have forgotten. Could it be?

Christmas camelia

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home…

William Wordsworth

I believe so, my dear gardeners, I believe so.

The garden abounds with camellias at this time of year. Outside my bedroom window I’m treated to an equally tall pink one. Perhaps some of you who are more educated in camelias than I might actually identify some of these. They were planted many years ago by someone no longer gracing Earth’s stage. I am simply the next to enjoy. And so I share with you:

pink camelias

I found this whimsical creature dangling over the fence that separates my yard from my dear next door neighbor’s:

red camelia

“The first recognition of beauty was one of the most significant events in the evolution of human consciousness. The feelings of joy and love are intrinsically connected to that recognition…Flowers…would become like messengers from another realm, like a bridge between the world of physical forms and the formless.”–Eckhart Tolle

White camelias in vase

I shall be eternally grateful for the beauty flowers bring to our lives. This month it is the camellias. Soon it will be the rhododendrums, the trusty hollyhock, and graceful cosmos and a world of infinite possibilities, forms, beauties. How lucky we are to notice, to tend, to provide, to teach, to enjoy, to appreciate, to be.

Love and blessings,
Kathryn xoxox

Posted on March 1st, 2008 by Kathryn
Filed under: Plants | 22 Comments »

Hwy. 12–Sonoma’s Wine Country

Young grapevines

In 1995 my Grandmother turned 96. This turning implied more than a turning of the page. It was a turning of the corner. After effectively caring for herself nearly an entire century, she simply could do it no longer. Clearly. After soul searching and chest pounding and tears and prayer I took a step I had never imagined I would take. I brought her down to the Bay Area. Fortunately angels were at my side and a clear path opened and the next thing I knew I was packing her up into my Explorer Sport and driving her to her new life–mine. Managing her day to day care was prohibitive. I was able, miraculously, divinely, to place her in a loving, well-managed nursing home in the heart of downtown Sonoma. Little did I know that I was entering a six year adventure, for who is thinking that someone will aspire to and attain a century on planet Earth?? Looking back, I should have known. In that moment, however, I was just focusing on what she needed at that moment. Over the next six years Grandma was mobile enough to be able to participate in family activities and Sunday drives, which she thoroughly enjoyed. It was always so poignant, though, that during that time my Grandmother said to me so many times, “I would love to have lived here.”

One of the many blessings of that particular period was that for four of those trying years I placed myself on a hillside, up a dirt road, on four fabulously beautiful and healing four acres that required me to drive over Hwy. 12 to arrive at her nursing home. Thus the road I am going to here document for you, largely in photos, carries with it an enormous psychic imprint of a thousand conversations and thoughts about the caring and well being of my beloved Grandmother. Do you hear me? I think some of you will.

tree with mustard

So out of that six year commitment I managed to build in this wondrously magnificent trail–the way in, the way out. Indeed, it was on this very road, as I was just exiting Sonoma, turning on to Hwy. 12 when I was struck solidly with the intuitive knowing that she had left planet Earth. “Oh, Grandma,” I found myself crying out, tears streaming down my face. Indeed, when I arrived home at the other end of Hwy. 12 there was a message from the hospital that she had left us.

So Hwy. 12 will always mean a lot to me. I carry it with me wherever I go, a sacred touchstone, that I find I long for if I am too long away from it. Happily, now when I go I am ususally seeking out my longtime hairdresser, my favorite Italian cafe, Cafe Citti, or the sheer joy of a beauteous afternoon.

President’s Day I stole out of the office (no one was working in New York, afterall) as I know how beautiful the area is at this time of year and I was enormously inspired to share some of those images with all of you! Enjoy!

cafe planter

And nearby…

hanging quilts

One of my very favorite beauties on Hwy. 12 is the elaborate stonework, all handdone, in a fashion lost to most skilled laborers. (That is Hwy.12 you see stretching just beyond the trees.)

stonework