Thoughts on gardening...

I have loved flowers since I was a little girl. I used to take my allowance to the farmer's market and buy bouquets of gladiolus with my money. Herbs and flowers all have a world of their own and each has a special meaning. In Victorian times, gentlemen would send their lady friends flowers according to their meaning. Here are a few examples:
feverfew, good health, warmth, you light up my life; heliotrope, devotion, faithfulness, I adore you; lavender, passion; lemon balm, healing lore; laurel, sucess, glory; marigold,health, joy, sunshine, thyme, bravery, courage, strength; yarrow, cure for heartache; bleeding heart, elegance, fidelity; daisy, innocence; cosmo, modesty; heather, admiration, wishes come true, lady's slipper, capricious beauty; nasturtium, patriotism; Queen Anne's Lace, I'll return; snapdragon, no, you are dazzling, but dangerous; sweet william, childhood, memories; verbena, faithfulness, and lastly zinnia, thoughts of absent friends! So, next time you send a bouquet....

The Attic...

While cleaning out Annie's Attic this afternoon, I came across a stack of journals that were tucked away in a satchel. I thought all of my journals were on my library shelves, but here were new treasures...I blew off the dust, settled on the bench under the maple tree and read them for hours. Twenty years ago. I had a different life then, young children, a home and farm to care for. I found a page titled, What I need out of life. It was a list. Here it is in entirety: sunshine, fresh air, rain, snow, quietness, loving atmosphere, pond or stream or lake, warm shelter with windows, outhouse, vegetable garden, berries, small barn, orchard, firewood, chickens, knitting needles, cast iron pot, good books, good reading, comfortable bed, hand tools, warm quilt, and good sock and sweaters. If only life could be that simple. What is your list?

United States Postal Service....

Quite frankly, I avoided email as long as possible, holding out as long as I could. I always send my thank you notes promptly through the mail..often with a sprig of rosemary (for remembrance) or lavender (for happiness and passions of the heart). The day finally came, I could hold out no longer and bought a lap top from the first salesman who needed the sale as his little girl was ill..no comparative price shopping for me. Oh, don't get me wrong, I am as addicted as the next person...checking often to see what urgent messages await me via the cosmos. I often think how different my business and personal life would be without this treasure (that, by the way, I am typing on this very moment.)

But, I am happy to say that snail mail exits and today I was patiently waiting as my carrier brought me treasure from a friend. Unwrapping a parcel and actually holding it in one's hands is something that email can't give us...so let's pick the rosemary and the lavender and send a note through the United States Postal Service.

West to Ohio....

When the family of ten reached the location on their map,they found no town, no churches, no schools, no cleared land....just a small post in the ground with a bit of cloth attached...and forests.

A storm was brewing, their bedding was wet and damp from the journey and their hopes dashed. Not knowing where to put the children, they found a huge hollowed out tree in which all of the children would fit. The husband and wife took turns guarding the children from bears and wolves and various other predators. On their first morning as the storm abated and the sun rose through raindrops, they were astounded at the beauty and named the town Aurora, which mean dawn. They built their homestead and it was years later before they even had a neighbor.

Indiana and Ohio are, of course, cleared of trees and neighbors abound in all direction. But out my bedroom window during a fierce thunderstorm, I can only see my neighbors pine trees and it is nice to know a little bit of wilderness still exists, if only in my imagination.

The Belly of the Earth

Last night deep, heavy rains plummeted into the belly of the earth. I awoke in the night to rumblings and flashings. I was glad to be tucked into the heart of my own house at White Picket Gardens, but thought of other stories, as one does in the middle of the night.

Scott Sanders, of Bloominton, has written several stories of his family moving from the East Coast west into Ohio, just a few miles from my northern Indiana location.

One of the stories goes like this: The husband persuaded his wife (and eight children!) to go West by telling her the new town would have a church and a school and neighbors and cleared land for gardening and farming.
She had no choice in the 1800's but to follow her husband to the ends of the earth, or simply put...to Ohio.

Tomorrow I will share their journey!

Dandelion Wine

One of my favorite books is Dandelion Wine written by Ray Bradbury. It is different from his science fiction. The story is poignant and reminiscent of his growing up years. Here is one of the lines from the introduction by Bradbury, "So,I turned myself into a boy running to bring a dipper of clear rainwater out of that barrel by the side of the house. And, of couse, the more water you dip out the more flows in. The flow has never stopped. Once I learned to keep going back and back again to those times, I had plenty of memories and sense impressions to play with, no work with, no, play with. Dandelion Wine is nothing if it is not the boy-hid-in-the-man playing in the fields of the Lords on the green grss of other Augusts in the midst of starting to grow up, grow old, and sense darkness waiting under the trees to seed the blood."
My neighbor, Amy, was out picking dandelions for early soup and salad. They are pleniful here in Indiana and a salad of them is said to thin your blood after a long winter. It has definitely been a long winter here...so raise the wine glass high...to dandelions and to stories.....

haiku for early Sunday morning in a small town

Sunday morning dawn
splotches of tranquility
dappling, dancing rays

silently she walks
the blind woman up the street
looking straight ahead

beckoning church bells
"onward Christian soldiers marching"
flip flops, heels, boots..trend

gasoline mowers
keeping up with the Joneses
too bad..I'm a Smith

Twilight

Small Indiana towns are charmed at twilight...there are still lazy bike riders meandering toward home...a few gardeners putting away their tools and gloves for the evening..and the cocaphony of the last of the bird songs. Venus is still bright in the night sky and shimmers over my neighbor's tall pine. As Robert Browning said, "All's right with the world." Pippa Passes

Welcome to Annie's Attic

Welcome to my world...a world of stories...and poems...and haiku...and travel...adventure..and gardening....or whatever else is going on in and around my world.

Today in northern Indiana the skies are heavy with rain with droppings off of fresh emerald branches. The irises are beginning to bloom as well as the old fashioned peony bush, which is the state flower of Indiana. Gardens are starting to sprout as well as new plantings
of thyme for the herb gardens. There is an old English song that goes like this:
"Oh, I was a damsel so fair,
But fairer I wished to appear.
So I washed me in milk, and
I dressed me in silk.
And put the sweet thyme in my hair."