A hike around the ranch

Yellows and greens.

As the biocentric view suggests, the garden prospers when control is balanced by equal measures of humility and benevolence.  A balance is struck.  Control, servitude, respect, imagination, pragmatism, an ecological conscience, compliance, and a certain measure of mysticism and altruism all meld together to provide nurturance.  Try to separate various aspects into their constituent parts — grant any one of them the status of fundamental gardening definition and one soon skews the entire process.  Put them together again in the service of the two-way street called nurturance, and we express the state of grace called gardening.

~ Jim Nollman, Why We Garden: Cultivating a Sense of Place, 1994

Time for a walk.

I seem to be getting in the habit of becoming wordy on Wordless Wednesdays.  That’s okay.  Sooner or later, the pendulum will swing back and I’ll want to spend my Wednesdays as wordlessly as possible.  Do you ever give yourself a wordless day?

The blueberry bushes are blossoming.

Let’s take a little walk around the ranch and see what’s going on.  Spring will soon be giving way to summer, if the weather forecasts are correct.  A lot of folks I’ve encountered, the from-here’s in particular, are not thrilled with our cool spring, but as you already know, I’ve been enjoying it.  The hot weather will be here soon enough.  Next week, in fact, when the temperature will rise into the 80’s during the day.

(Have I ever told you about the from-here’s and come-here’s?  I don’t remember.  That’s what the folks that are from here ask.  Are you a from-here or a come-here?  M and I, of course, are come-here’s because we are not from here.)

The pin oak near the veggie garden.

The quote I started with can be, I think, applied to life in general as well as gardening.  Nurturance does require a certain balance, doesn’t it?  Too much of one thing, and it throws it all off and you’ve defeated the purpose of nurturance.

Soon.

One of the things you might notice on the close-ups in this post are the little yellow speckles covering just about everything.  The tree pollen from the lobolly pines is flying everywhere.  Yesterday morning during my yoga practice I glanced out the patio doors and watched as a gust of wind caused a big, yellow cloud to pour off of the big pine in the backyard.  I am one of the lucky ones.  I don’t suffer from seasonal allergies.  I can’t imagine what it would be like to live with all this pollen if I was allergic to it.

Rosebud, with no hidden meanings.

Although I am not practicing Wordless Wednesday in any form today, I will be going wordless starting tomorrow.  Or almost wordless.  I am going to take a sort-of break from blogging.  I have been planning this for weeks, and Frank (over at A Frank Angle) must be psychic because he recently posted about blogging breaks in his post On the Blogging Blues.  If you haven’t read it, go on over now.  I’ll wait for you.  It’s a good read, and there is a lot of good stuff in the comments, too.  There usually is at Frank’s place.

The chives are blooming.

I have no real plans or time frame.  I won’t be posting unless something I absolutely MUST share with you comes along or I feel inspired enough to do a weekend coffee share.  I will, from time to time, be visiting you all as I think this will be a good time to get caught up a little and return some of your visits.  If you read Frank’s post (you didn’t?  why not?), my blogging break will be somewhere between a Level 3 and a Level 4, or maybe it’s a Level 5 since I am leaving the door open to occasional posting.  It’s always good to leave a door (or at least a window) open.  Whenever I try to break from blogging completely, my mind suddenly decides it has a thousand blog posts to write and share.  This way, with open doors and windows, my mind will feel more comfortable and less deprived.  I don’t know about your mind, but mine is much more cooperative when I approach things with less force and more options.  The mind seems to like choice.

I love this shade of purple.  The chives are tasty, too.

By the time I return on a regular basis, I suspect the roses and peonies will be blooming.  The grass will have grown enough to be mowed several more times.  We might even have the pool open for the season since it looks like the warm weather will move in and stay for a while.

The little dogwood is doing well.

By the time I return on a regular basis, I will have taken plenty of walks, with and without the camera.  More without, I think, but again, it’s not good to say absolutely that I will go out every day without the camera.  You know how fickle the mind can be.  Hopefully I will have finished a number of projects that are taking up a lot of time lately, but there are more projects on the horizon to fill the void.  This is the busy season here on the ranch.  I bet it’s the busy season for a lot of you, too.

The woods are darkening as the canopy thickens.

By the time I return on a regular basis, I will be feeling rested and refreshed and ready to write and post once again.

This morning’s view from the dock.

Thank you so much for stopping by today.  I think I’ll go to the Point for sunset this evening.  If you have time and inclination, feel free to join me.  Sunset is at 7:52 PM.  I’ll be there about 20 minutes early.  I like to take a walk on the beach while I’m there, and have a look around before the evening show begins.

Walking back through the woods after a visit to the dock.

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

The big oak in the backyard.