Autumn Cottage Diarist

The Happy Gardener

6pm this evening - a golden evening of these golden days of late summer - calm and peaceful, heavily lily-scented, soft, abundant. A dear friend visiting over the last few days and we had just got back from a visit to show her Houghton Lodge Gardens for the first time and then make a foray into Longstock Park Nursery where numerous unusual plants were discovered and money (ours!) was seen to change hands...

Mug-of-tea time on the patio on our return - surrounded by the debris of the days...a carrier bag full of plants, more cuttings and seedlings on the table (generously brought and given by Dear Friend) - a pen for labelling said gifts, seed heads from the garden and large (and frequently replenished!) cuppas. Surrounded by the glorious, heady evening scent of the Asiatic lilies still being visited by the bees.

The cup that cheers, friends and flowers - does life get any better??

Inside and Outside on a Drizzly Day

A drizzly morning followed by a humid afternoon, so I have been attending to tasks suitable for both conditions.

This morning was 'Orchid bath time' - all my collection of orchids carted into the kitchen, where they are periodically given a dousing and sit in lukewarm water, while at the same time, they get a thorough misting. (I also mist them in situ, but I can 'go to town' when they are all sitting in the kitchen, not in front of 200 year old portraits!). It's a long job, but I am rewarded by orchids flowering in most months of the year.

Outside, the first of the Asiatic Lilies that have been forming buds for about three months have finally opened. The wait was so very well worth it. Look how spectacular they are! Unfortunately, their most spectacular quality - their scent - I cannot share with you until SmellyNet is invented. You'll just have to imagine - and enjoy their beauty on the screen.

Mornings With Mary - 1

Once again, a visit to Rebecca at Recuerda mi Corazon, where she hosts Mornings with Mary each Monday. Rebecca's blog is inspiring me greatly at present (two posts here in two days!!) - now I am taking the leap of participating more. This is one way of enjoying  sharing with others some of my own pleasure when I travel (and when I create imagery at home) in discovering the beauty of religious art. I do not practice any one particular faith but am drawn to  intense spirituality of both people and place - it fills that 'hole in my soul' that we all, I think, possess - but which is filled in different ways for different people.

The first images I would like to share are of  two of those of Nossa Senhora de Fátima - 'Our Lady of Fatima'  to be found in churches all over Lisbon in Portugal. This portrayal of Mary is a popular figure in Lisbon, seen in many different places, Fatima being a 'local' site of important pilgrimage, just over an hour from the capital.

Two churches - two portrayals of Mary - but how different they are in the emotions they conjure in me. The first, above, is found in the Basilica da Estrela on the outskirts of Lisbon. Like many Lisboan churches I did not find it to be welcoming - but rather dark and forbidding, and here, Mary is also distanced from those who come to look and venerate. She is separated from the viewer (and from the images of the two children who first saw her in visions) by plate glass; swathed in a lurid yellow light. My first sensation was that of being instructed to perceive this effigy of holiness from afar. Kept at much more than arms length, she had nothing to do with me, but was literally separated by a barrier that I was forbidden to cross. (My second observation was 'who on earth chose that horrible soda-light glow?!)

Compare her with the second image - from the Igreja de São Domingos in the centre of Lisbon. Again, a dark and rather depressing interior, but here, although the placement and iconography is more or less the same, no glass separates the compassionate visage from her onlookers - She is gentle, compassionate, warm and  accessible. I could touch her if I wanted. The glow comes not from a switch thrown by a sacristan - but from individual candles, lit by individual human beings as invocations for intercession or remembrance in times of gratitude or difficulty.  For me, the link between human and Divine is made so much more clearly here - unsurprisingly, I like this portrayal a great deal more.

 

Thrilled to my Tiny Little Tootsies!

Vintage steps - complete with paint-splashes

A day off for Alec last Friday - so a day off for me as well. I had planned a visit to two or three antique shops during the past week, but they had not happened, so when A asked for suggestions, I turned away from the recent surfeit of garden visits to suggest a trip northward, into Oxfordshire, to Haynes of East Challow - a reclamation yard/second hand furniture store and seller of all things DIY and blokey that I have visited for thirty years. (It assuages my guilt, Dear Reader, to have at least one part of the venue where poor A does not have to trail around, arms dangling, doing his best to look interested in my weird, wonderful and totally obscure interests!!) I've not visited for a couple of years, so was delighted to find the furniture barn packed to the gunwales with all qualities of old furniture, from beautiful Georgian bookcases to ratty office furniture.

My eye settled on half a dozen pieces which would be 'just perfect' - but (fortunately) I now drive a much smaller car than the people carrier of past days, so 'Restrain and reconsider' was my very motto - which I did. In the end I purchased just two items - both of which I love to my clodhopping size sevens!!

Item one was a very fragile looking step ladder. As is my luck, one of the few items without a price label - so I asked the proprietor (in another part of the yard) 'how much?' She asked me to identify it and almost immediately told me that it was part of their working equipment, so 'not for sale'. Then just a few minutes later, she asked me again - 'where was it?' - went to look, and came back saying, 'no not used by us' and I could buy it for £15.00. I was both relieved to know that nobody did actually risk life and limb by climbing an item that did not look as if it would support a four year old - but also tickled pink that I had found something I had been looking for for ages - a ladder on which to display my houseplants!

Item two is also garden oriented - a lovely, hand-thrown terracotta pot, which someone has 'artistically' (NOT!!) - painted with black paint. Fortunately, that is coming off with much soaking and scrubbing with a wire brush (bought in the DIY and tools shed on A's advice) - a little paint left behind will be no problem (makes it look rather 'Etruscan', I think) and I will have added one more interesting item to the garden landscape.

Elbow grease, hot water, wire scrubber

Getting there!

Many of my Internet friends seem to have the same propensity for seeking out quirky 'bits and bobs' for next to nothing. Fran Redondowriter does the same on the other side of the planet - different 'stuff' but the same sense of fun, discovery, and inherent call to creativity that the discovered items hold for both of us. I hope everyone reading this has a call to some form of exploration, discovery and creativity today - whether it be in your garden, kitchen, art-room, or science lab. It's what lifts us out of mere existence and makes us more fully human, isn't it? and we can all be, I think, at least a little happier as a result..

(This post is the first I will be sharing on Rebecca's Sunday 'Postcards from Paradise' at  her ever-creative and inspiring Recuerda mi Corazon. Why not pop over there to see other blog posters who are sharing a little bit of their own Paradise today?)

The Happy Bees

There are many serious concerns for the health and numbers of bee and butterfly populations, both in the UK and worldwide at the moment - so I am always delighted to see even one or two bees in my garden. At the moment, though the day is overcast after some quite heavy rain, I am very happy to tell you that the garden is just humming with little black and yellow honeymakers.

I do plant particularly with bees and butterflies in mind...the Oregano flowers above are one of their favourites - but the super-magnet this summer is the Veronica. It's a somewhat nondescript herbaceous perennial for most of the year - but for about six weeks, its blue spikes have both looked elegant and attracted the most enormous numbers of bees.

A photograph cannot do it justice - but here you can see that each spike has not one but (at least) two happy bees crawling all over it and returning time and time again to sup up what it has to offer.

If you can only do one thing for wildlife in your garden - plant something bee or butterfly friendly. There are many suggestions here (in a downloadable list format) and you will be doing both the planet and yourself a favour - watching these creatures becomes entrancing - and - in the case of the herb garden, you as well as the bees and butterflies can enjoy the produce of the plant. That's what I call a 'win-win' situation!