The garden path

Along the garden path

Fantasies are more than substitutes for unpleasant reality.  They are also dress rehearsals, plans.  All acts performed in the world begin in the imagination.

~ Barbara G. Harrison

Triplets

There is a saying about leading someone down the garden path.  It means to deceive.  The idea is that a garden path is so beautiful and pleasant, that a person can be guided along without noticing they are being deceived.

Fencing

There have been times when I’ve felt as though we were shepherded along the garden path when it came to buying the house and property here at the Wabi-Sabi Ranch.  Not by real estate agents or by the previous owners (although there was some deception there).  No, not by anyone else.  I think we merrily skipped along the garden path all on our own.

Gateway to the garden

But is it deception if what brought you to a place is a vision or a dream?  Is it deception if you can see beyond the chaos and the wreckage, if you can see the bones and know they are sound and have the potential to become something wonderful?

It’s in the details

Those are some of the things I pondered yesterday as we moved from one problem to another.  It was one of Those Days.  A flood in the laundry room, a car that wouldn’t start, a failed inspection of the new heat pump, a mouse in the house.

Prince Owlbert at his post

People are buffeted by circumstances so long as they believe themselves to be creatures of outside conditions.  But when they realize that they are creative powers, and that they command the hidden soil and seeds of their being out of which circumstances grow, they then become the rightful masters of themselves . . . Circumstances do not make the person; they reveal the person to him or herself.

~ James Allen

Gifts of the morning

The interesting thing, though, is the way a change of perception can change the reality of a situation.  The laundry room floor is now thoroughly cleaned and mopped, including under and behind the washer and dryer (areas that desperately needed a good cleaning!).  We have a new battery in the car and it solved the problem we’ve been having for weeks.  Better yet, it happened in a place and at a time when there were people around to give the car the jump it needed to get started.  We found out the heat doesn’t work on our new heat pump while the weather is still warm and we have no need of it instead of finding out on the first cold night and shivering our way through the night and the days waiting for someone to fix it.  Better yet, the heat pump is still under warranty.  How often that does happen?  Almost never, that’s how often.  Planned obsolescence didn’t get us this time around.

The colors of fall

As for the mouse, that’s one reason we have cats.  They earned their keep last night, although I do wish Izzy would learn to present the mouse to us after she’s killed it and not as a wiggling, wriggling, escaping toy she wants to play with.

Izzy speeding through the dining area in the kitchen

Plans get you into things but you must work your way out.

~ Will Rogers

Work continues

M and I have been busy in the kitchen.  The wallpaper border is gone where it needs to be gone (some of it will end up behind the new cabinets so there was no need to waste time steaming and scraping it off).  The ceiling fans (that don’t work) have been removed.  (You might recall that the one in the dining area decided to remove itself one evening after dinner by falling out of the ceiling just after I’d been sitting under it.)  A new light fixture has gone up in the cooking area.  The walls and ceiling have been patched.  The ceiling has been painted, and we have started painting the walls.  The colors didn’t come out well in my images, but the ceiling is white.  The walls are a grayish-purple (called Darling Lilac).  We have decided to leave the woodwork around the windows as is.  It fits in with our distressed and rustic theme, and will almost match the new cabinets.

Another look at this corner.

The hutch you see in the photo above will either be sold if we can find a buyer, or we’ll take the top off and paint the bottom to match the new cabinets.  If I end up painting it, I will leave the rooster, etc., and just paint the framework to start.  We will need cabinets of some kind in that part of the kitchen, but can’t afford to have the kitchen people do it right now so we’re improvising.  The top of that monster, by the way, weighs a ton.  We’re going to need help moving it.  Anyone want to volunteer?

Part of this morning’s gathering of birds.

I reckon that’s it from the Wabi-Sabi Ranch for today.  Thank you for joining me on a walk down the garden path.  Speaking of walks, don’t forget our group walk, aka Walktober, is this week.  You have through Sunday.  If you need more time, let me know.  I’ll gladly extend it.  Don’t forget to leave a link (or a pingback will do) here so I can include you in the round-up next week.

Leaving the garden path and heading towards the woodland trail.

Be good, be kind, be loving.  Just Be.  🙂