“As rosemary is to the spirit, so lavender is to the soul.”
_Anonymous

“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.

It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime.” _ Ray Bradbury

“I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.”_Laura Ingalls Wilder

“A garden should make you feel you’ve entered privileged space — a place not just set apart but reverberant — and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry.”_Michael Pollan

Our garden is something to cherish. Something nearer poetry. D works there every day; watering, weeding, tenderly tending, always lovingly aware it is something alive – a growing, ever-changing canvas for his pleasure. When there are flowers, he brings them to me – tokens of love – more precious than a whole car-load purchased from FTD.

Now, as we enter November and winter approaches he is talking of putting the garden to bed for the season.

I’m going to help!

As I told you yesterday, I’ve been on a long walk, down a strange road. During my journey D has, as always, been a pillar of consistency. He cooks when I’m too busy or too tired. He shops when it needs to be done – everything from soup to nutz. And he gardens – every day.

While I was away from here, from cooking and shopping and cleaning and everything else, D has been my rock.

So…the time has come for me to put away excuses (too busy, too tired, too…whatever) and help. In the garden. In the kitchen. Where ever.

A new season has arrived.

Life is short.
Kiss slowly,
Love truly,
Forgive quickly,
Break the rules,
Laugh uncontrollably,
and Never regret Anything
that makes you Smile.