Aahhh gardening!!! Absolutely and without a doubt – one of my very favorite things to do. We have a sign as you go into our secret garden and it says “If you long for a mind at rest – and a heart that cannot harden – go find a gate that opens wide – into a Secret Garden” I LOVE that quote and I love our sign – it just gives me a sense of peace to see it as I pass by. I also love the quote that says “I wonder what it would be like – to live in a world where it was always June.” Can you imagine???
There’s just something about being one with nature and raking and digging and planting seeds. Then watching those seed pop through that dirt almost like a miracle has just happened overnight. And it really has, you know? To think we can plant a dry hard seed in the earth and give it a little water for a few days and before we know it – you see that little sprout come peeking out – That’s a miracle!
I’ve said before that I don’t know what it was or how I came to be this way, but I have something down deep inside of me that defies explanation. Sometimes that’s a good thing and sometimes it’s a bad thing. But regardless … this is me! I love the old and distressed look – anything that looks like it came from another time in the past. And I love plain and simple – natural and earthy. I’m a homebody by nature and I’d rather be foo fooing around home than doing anything else I know of.
I love sitting in the porch swing and listening to the crickets and frogs and watching the lightning bugs. And then there are the butterflies that flutter around above all the flowers in the cutting gardens … It makes for a wonderful life – being this way – at least for me.
And I wonder sometimes – what makes some people be drawn to glitz and glitter, rushing traffic, big bright lights and lots of commotion, while others prefer the earthier things of life and nature and sitting under the stars? Why AM I this way? Because my mom and sisters were/are not this way at all. They’ve always been into fashion, jewelry – makeup – shopping and going. So what made me so different? I have no clue.
Maybe it’s that I grew up in a kind of “Walton’s” setting with my grandparents, parents, sisters, 2 aunts and 2 uncles and a cousin or two – and I followed my Granny Anderson around every step she took and she was Granny Clampett or Ma Kettle to the core. From making lye soap to wringing the necks on chickens, scalding and plucking their feathers for our next meal – to gardening and tending to that garden to put food on our big long family table – I was in her shadow every minute trying to help or do my own thing to try and mimic the way she was doing it.
So as the years passed by – I grew up and married the love of my life and we had a family and I was so busy with home and family – but as they grew up and away – I started my flea market gardens about 25 years ago and I was in hog heaven and I’ve been there ever since.
We now have a cottage garden, herb gardens, a 2 1/2 acre secret garden with paths that go here and there through surprises and our own huge cutting gardens. I am obsessed with gardening. Sadly – I do NOT have a green thumb – but I’m a big prayer warrior – so it all works out pretty well.
About 18 years ago – one of my sisters gave me a book on Tasha Tudor’s gardens for my birthday. I devoured that book that very night – because something about the way she looked on the cover – just made me know – she was living the life I wanted to live. SO I expanded our gardens and started collecting huge baskets and I’d go into the woods in late fall and gather my kindling sticks for the winter – BECAUSE Tasha preferred stick kindling because of the crackle it makes when it’s burning. I’ve been gathering kindling in the woods every fall since – and I LOVE to start our daily fireplace fires with my stick kindling.
You’ll find lots of good gardening secrets in our garden pages here at Love, Home and Health – and if you’re still one of those people that are a little slow in ‘finding yourself’ … there’s no better place to look that in a cottage or flea market garden …
Daylilies – Growing Daylilies and Ann Cluck’s Daylily Farm
Waking Up Our Garden Beds
