Several trees overshadow one half of our back yard and make it feel forest-y. Only two of the trees are actually on our property, and the taller is a pine tree we are ashamed to say we haven’t identified. I spend a lot of time picking up its needles that fall all year, blowing and drifting over sweet woodruff, rhododendron, rosemary, campanula ground cover, and on to my dear manzanita.
If I were a good forester would go out each morning and groom my park, but it’s painstaking work, as the long needles get tangled in the various convoluted branches and sift down underneath the lower canopies.
When I was stretching my back to this task yesterday it turned into a general tidying-up of the “woods.” I pruned the manzanita some more, trying to maintain head clearance above the path it wants to span. We’ve already widened the path as much as possible to accommodate our favorite little tree.
My other goal in trimming it is to keep the natural curves of the shrub, so I try to envision the direction of future growth. Ideally it wouldn’t need pruning at all, but when we planted it we didn’t anticipate its leaning so sharply northward. I removed dead twigs and every needle I could see.
Then it was all ready for a photo session.
That pine tree looks amazingly healthy in the photo at top, but in this one you can see some of the clumps of brown needles just waiting to fall.
If we just focus in on one or two needles in a small space, they actually look artistically placed and ornamental.
I brought the manzanita prunings indoors to decorate my table.
The weather is cool, I mean. And this week it’s been cloudy as well, which is nice for taking pictures of flowers. When Kim posted a picture of an unusual coneflower on her blog I was so taken with it, if I were more the sort of person who acts quickly I’d have run over to Lowe’s in hopes of getting one of my own.
But I’m not. My style of impulsiveness sent me out back with my camera to study my own basic purple coneflower.
I began to think how fun it would be to have a collection
of different sorts of coneflowers.
August is full of special feast days in my parish, and we are also getting ready for our big food fair that happens in September. On one overcast day I took a picture of the rose mallow and manzanita at church.
And another day I snapped this one, of a crew of us making 40+ pans of spanakopita to put in the freezer. Those are tins of butter, stacks of filo dough, and a spinach-cheese filling on our table. We will defrost the pastries the weekend of the festival and bake them to sell hot in the Greek booth.
My loving man stopped on the way home from the dentist at a dahlia farm, and brought me this custom collection of big ones. Nice warm colors to make me remember it’s summertime.
And at home my one red zinnia is climbing past three feet tall, twice as high as its neighbor. I bought two plants that were supposed to be the same, but they obviously are not.
I’m glad I haven’t had only the garden variety of pretties this summer. I’ll close this random photo report with one of the sweetest flowers in my life when she was at our house, dear little Ivy.
The sun came out this afternoon, and I expect to see more of it next month, and feel heat. Then I’ll be posting some tomato pictures, too! But I hope I won’t have to wait quite that long.
Hyssop is blooming in my garden, reminding me of Psalm 51: Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be cleansed. Thou shalt wash me, and I shall become whiter than snow. Three years ago seeds must have fallen into the ground from the plant I’d bought; why they waited so long to sprout this spring, I don’t know.
The zinnias are going strong, and now the purple coneflowers are coming on. I got distracted and forgot about them when they were dormant and the foxgloves were dominating that space, and by planting the red zinnias I broke my rule about not having red and magenta-colored flowers together. That could have been a disaster!
But they seem to be getting along o.k. Even when the landscape is not living up to my visions, I’m relaxed out in the garden in the midst of my accomplishments. They are really God’s accomplishments; the little contributions I made could never on their own have created the splendor that is right here in my back yard.
An orange dragonfly posed for a picture.
I have joked that I approach agoraphobia, but that was coming at the truth from the wrong direction. I just love being home and working at home. Until I came home to the Orthodox Church, I dragged my feet even about going to church, much as I loved the people there, and God. And though I will gladly drive and fly all over the country and even the world to see and be with those dear to me, it’s annoying just having to run errands in my town and break my concentration, my focus on home.
It’s not laziness, it’s an attentiveness that encompasses many kinds of mental and physical work. You’ve seen the long lists of things homemakers are called upon to do; well, I have my own intensely personal version of that list, and only God knows all that is on it, what burdens I carry and how light they are here in my realm.
No, I don’t fear going out, I don’t have a phobia of The Marketplace. But when I do go, it is always with the anticipation of feathering my nest with things I will bring back, or with the confidence that I will soon return to the place where I am most alive and productive…and the hope that having accomplished those outside tasks I will have a longish reprieve from distractions, and be able to get on with my best work.
“The early morning has gold in its mouth,” said Ben Franklin. I bet he meant a different sort from what I found this morning. The birds started in earlier than ever today, at 5:00, but I was already awake!
lavender and salvia
After a while I realized that getting up was the thing to do. I just now read that some have called that moment when you get up earlier than you really wanted the Heroic Moment. Today was not that, because by the time I did throw off the blankets I was completely happy about the decision and it was easy to do.
sweet basil and nasturtiums competing
So often we have fog and cold feet in the mornings, but today was actually summery. The sun was shining, and the air had never taken on that cruel sharpness overnight – I could have eaten my breakfast outdoors at 6 a.m., but I didn’t even think of it. The windows and door were open and I listened to the birds and marveled.
Early Girl is growing fast.
I walked around in the garden and took pictures of the flowers before the sun had a chance to get up high and glare at them.
My early morning had gold and silver and rubies and diamonds and all was bathed in the glory of God.
Gladsome Lights 
