Rockport Garden Tour!

My mom, Godmother and I went on the annual Rockport Garden Tour today.  For those not from the area, Rockport is a quaint little seaside town here on the northern coast of Massachusetts.  This was our first time on the tour and it was fantastic!  The weather was overcast and a bit cool, which actually turned out to be perfect as everything looked lovely and it wasn't too hot to get around.  There were twelve houses in all.  Each one was unique and you could tell the owners put a lot of time and love into them. 

My favorite was styled after an English country garden.  The owner we met does it all herself!  She said the secret to her great results was amending the soil every year with chicken manure!  It gave really beautiful results - she had delphiniums taller than me!

The owner's dogs :-)

Here are a few other highlights from the tour:

A big metal rat on their roof?!!

A nice way to spend the day

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Amalthea

First post back after a long while!  Here is a peek at Amalthea.  She started out as a goat-nymph, but she became a bit more sheep-like!

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The Tree That Blooms In Winter

More snow is forecast, but the days are getting longer, a certain energy of impending rebirth is in the air, and I am reminded of this little tree that I photographed earlier in the winter.  I am not sure what kind of tree it is - perhaps a flowering almond?  But it was the small blossoms braving a bitter cold wind that caught my eye one day.  Spring was a long way off, but these little buds had opened, perhaps coaxed by the sun which had been especially kind on the days leading up to this.

I felt a kind of kinship to this young tree.  How many bright March mornings had I thrown on a t-shirt and bounced out of doors expecting the first warmth of spring, only to meet a cold that would last weeks longer?  Being creatures of nature, sensing and responding to the seasons,  it is easy, and often tempting, to be fooled. 

I thought, too, of how many times in my life I had felt driven, filled with an energy and certainty that the time for me to "blossom" had come.  Time moved on and nothing happened, yet here I was ready to explode with potential.  It was a painful and frustrating feeling, like all would go to waste.  I did not understand. 

Perhaps, after experiencing many cycles, this tree will learn to better gauge when the time is "right" to bloom.  Whether it can or not, I do not know.  I do hope it knows better than I did - to bloom in winter is not a waste.

To see a tree bloom in winter makes me smile. 

It shares with me the energy to move forward, past the cold, toward something fresh and new - to start the cycle over again.  I hope that, when seasons change, it will find the spirit to try again.

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