Thursday, April 01, 2010

My Happy Place

Recently, I've been spending a lot of time looking at gardens. I've been getting emails from Better Homes and Gardens on how to make mulch, prepare soil, get rid of weeds, make compost, etc, how to plan around this and that.. and I love it.

I'm not usually a stressed person, but sometimes, despite my best efforts, I do get a little overwhelmed with all the necessary things in life that push aside other necessaries and all wanted unnecessaries. I always heard of a happy place, but didn't really have one. When stressed, I'd imagine myself cooking dinner in my future house with sweet, little children (that always tend to look like those curly-haired, rosy-cheeked precious Hobbit children from the Lord of the Rings movies..) pitter-pattering down the hall when Dad comes home from work and kisses me on the cheek. Or I'd picture myself happily working as a part-time PA when the kids are in school, loving it and knowing all the school was worth it. Well, I still picture those things (of course much more of the former) but now I do have a happy place. And it is my future garden.

My garden is very green and lush. I love color and I love flowers, but I'm not sure if they're in this garden. At least not all of it. Tall trees completely shade the entire backyard and the thick canopy casts a cool, serene, green tint. There is a rustling of leaves and the trickle of water; there are a few crooning birds in the morning and maybe even a quiet rush of distant traffic. But no other sound.

There are little paths that wind through the trees to secret places. My favorite: a seating area where my husband and I sit together in puffy patio chairs crowning a shallow, long pool of water that flows off to some other area of the garden. There is a little table between us and a low wall that surrounds the narrow resting area. Another favorite is in the very back corner. It is another pool of cool water, raised to the height of your hips, contained by a moss-covered, dark-stoned wall. This area is very shaded, a shade darker and a degree quieter than the rest of the backyard. The surface of the pool is absolutely covered by algae and other green flora. A Bocca della Verità-esque fountain mounted on a wall embellished with cracked tiles (which are, like everything else in this garden, covered in green) creates the only movement in the still pool and the only glimpse of clear water void of the obscuring greenery.

Well, this is my beautiful, serene, happy place. Welcome.



2 comments:

Melissa said...

I love it. Can I come visit your garden? We can sit and talk about deep subjects and read Little Women

HR White said...

Uh, I found myself liking this post more than I felt a boy such as I should...with all the gardening and what not. You should write books. That was beautiful.