Saturday, June 23, 2012

Pink Saturday in My Garden

Honestly, my garden is mostly shades of lavender, yellow and green . . .
but I found a few pink blossoms to share.

 This beautiful rose starts off pink, then fades to cream with just a hint of pink at the end of its petals.
Rescued by my son from the compost pile at the garden center where he worked,
it reminds me that given enough love, water and sunshine we all can bloom!

 These lavender buds will turn pink in a few weeks.

 My son's secret corner of the cottage garden beds.
Ice Plant and Franklin.

 Pinchusion
The bees happily forage these blooms.
Bee Balm
The low growing variety has just started to push blooms.

No garden of mine or my son's would be complete without succulents.
The Hen and Chicks were moved at the end of last summer
and have been happily growing and throwing off lots of "chicks."
I didn't know they bloomed, and pink no less.  Cool!

Enjoy your weekend and visit Bev's blog How Sweet The Sound to catch up with the pink doings of a few of her friends!

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Old Friends


 photo courtesy of simonandgarfunkel.com
To listen to "Old Friends," click here

70 still seems terribly strange, but I'm closer than I was when the album came out.  And today, just like at the tender age of 17, I know how wonderful it is to have old friends. I have a group of friends, women I have known 10, 20, 30, 40 + years who sustain me and support me.  They have become part of my family.  Some of them even remember my grandma & nana, two very different women who both encouraged my creativity and love of beautiful things and used to tell me I could do anything I wanted to do, be anyone I wanted to be.

My daughter's best friend does not like making new friends.  I, on the other hand, LOVE making new friends.  I made some new friends this very afternoon.  I went over to my favorite sandwich shop for lunch.  Close to where I parked my car there was an El Monte-brand RV, with California plates.  How could I not go over and say hi?  Turns out they had rented the RV in New Jersey and are themselves from the London, England suburbs.  They were actually delighted to make my acquaintance.  We ended up having lunch together, talking about their kids, my kids, music, how much they love Cape Cod, how delightful France is and a bit about our travels.  We exchanged email addresses.  We hugged good-bye and they drove off to visit P-town for the day.

I drove home and decided to tackle the stuff I am having so much trouble with lately -- I've been struggling with almost everything relating to my creativity.  What to do with the barn:  shop or studio or some combination?  What to do with my blog -- who am I writing it for?  How to get past this odd artists' block I have, where I have tons of ideas but can't get the ideas out of my head and into a piece of art.  I'm tackling the blog first -- writing it for this wonderful group of women, my old friends.  I know who they are, I can visualize their responses, and I have years of experience writing to each of them individually.  The best part of that decision is I don't feel the need to explain every little thing.  That was always the part of my blog that sounded so ponderous to me!  To my old friends, I love you dearly.  To my new friends, I'm delighted you've visited.  I hope you will join me regularly on this ride.