TARA DILLARD

What You Want Now: Hedge - Stick Trees - Tara Turf

noreply@blogger.com (Tara Dillard) — Wed, 26 May 2021 15:17:00 +0000

"Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work Regular Hours." Jane Kenyon

Garden parts, below, naming themselves, personally for you. Hedges, Stick trees, Tall Tara Turf & Mown Tara Turf. Focal Point on Axis: Path to House.

Garden Design as Lecture Titles, above. Not your style, below? Come, walk with me. Won't be long before I've taken hold of your arm, hooked in mine. Life conversation, Garden conversation. More than seeing, below. You'll understand. Your time redeemed.

"A poet's job is to find a name for everything: To be a fearless finder of the names of things." Jane Kenyon.

Within: Hedge - Stick Trees - Tara Turf, you've found the cradle of your Naming Things.

Not my opinion, thousands of years, we've sustained ourselves from gardens. From those gardens, their templates still used, feeding us, pollinators, Earth. Above/Below, you're looking at Your History.

Cow Parsley & Tulips, above. Simple pairing, divine beauty.

"That poem was given to me by the Muse, the Holy Ghost." Jane Kenyon.

Variations on the theme, above. Hedge & Gravel, instead of Hedge & Tara Turf. It's yours to mix/match as your site sings it's love song, to you.

Understanding Nature's preoccupations, there's a joy in reaching another winter season, bare branches.

Gardens are your bounty, "it is an effectional knowledge, having an effect on the knower."

Getting to this simplicity, all pics, empties you, finally, of distractions, rabbit holes, busyness, ego.

In return, Stewardship becomes yours, partaking of the transformation. What you've always wanted your Garden to be, more, yourself.

Stewardship of your garden isn't about working in your garden, it's planted deeper, it's in your heart, and the tree-of-life.

Don't forget this view of your garden, above.

In the stewardship, Hedge - Stick Trees - Tara Turf, never fails to delight, be unique, feed soil, wildlife, you.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

All pics, Columbine Hall, here.

Science is catching up, in small ways, with soil and our health, soil and the communication of plants. Amazing to discover plants are communicating with each other across great distances. Amazing to discover how much our moods are dictated by the myriad bacteria in our gut, bacteria from Nature not our DNA.

We need Nature, to be healthy. No pun intended, but it's there. Without stewardship, we're not healthy, nor Earth.

For decades, I assumed the Bible used metaphors of working the land, because it's something most people understood. Assumption annihilated. Science has proved, we need the soil, to be who we are, and healthy, while we're being the best version toward ourselves, each other, and Earth.

Our bodies are born with thousands of organisms straight from soil, not our parents. Plants communicating across vast swaths of Earth? They use soil organisms too, and electricity. The same electricity running our heart beats.

"The same word used for working the ground (avoda) is used for the service or worship of God. God's intention is that man would be a gardener who tills the very ground from which he came. It is a picture of how man must guard his heart and his life. God charging man to till the land can also be taken symbolically --- breaking up and preparing the soil of his heart for the Tree of Life to grow in him." The Passion Translation.

TPT has been enjoyable since discovering it a few months ago. Yet, the quote, above, frames a question. Did anyone writing their translation know about the science of our bodies and soil? Seems a layer of meaning is missing. Anyone? What do you think? Not unusual, to be wildly off, at some point, on the way to understanding, for me.

Mad Boy: A Little Madness in the Garden

noreply@blogger.com (Tara Dillard) — Mon, 10 May 2021 15:31:00 +0000

No detail for your garden is too small. Apologies, for decades, overlooking the obvious, below.

Notice the pigeons?

They're dyed.

The owner's grandfather began the tradition, she, his granddaughter, Sofka, continues it. There's even a fan club, aka Trust, "Pink Pigeons Trust (named after the Mad Boy's habit of dyeing birds in jewelled hues)."

He dyed his pigeons jewel tones, was nicknamed, Mad Boy, and had a stunning garden. Hope there is a heaven, and Mad Boy is busy in his celestial garden, awaiting all of us to visit. What types of ideas and mischief's will Mad Boy create during his infinity? He's on my list, Gardens to Visit.

This reminds me, must finally, faithfully, turn off the wireless at night. A dear friend, an RN, said she began turning hers off, her dream world began again. Didn't realize till mentioned, my dreaming has been turned 'off'. Worth it to visit Mad Boy's garden. Hope you've been gifted with travel dreams too.

Garden Design: Classic color combination, above, it will never fail you: Green, White, Brown.

How Mad Boy's granddaughter is living in the house & garden:

"Her day usually begins with writing in her study and she takes pleasure in arranging flowers for the house, mixing the more formal ones with wildflowers, wood anemones, hyacinths, tulips and fritillaries that grow in profusion in the long grass that borders the driveway. It is a short meander down the drive into the charming market town of Faringdon, where the excellent Hare in the Woods delicatessen provides Sofka and Vassilis with delicious salads for a working kitchen lunch and something for a relaxed supper with Leo and Annabelle, who live nearby."

Owner of the house/garden, Sofka Zinovieff, above.

Had the good fortune, last summer, to find her chair, above, in a small Southern town with no red lights or fast food. Plate on the bottom reads, By Special Appointment to His Majesty The King, Warings, Oxford Street - London.....

Placed the chair in the library, and it moves often to kitchen or office....Like Sofka, above, the chair 'fits' my body. Knew from first sit, it was a chair for office and pleasure reading. A surprise, I like it for meals too. Under-priced, it was on sale. I did not negotiate lower. One must keep integrity.

Sofka and her husband, preparing for a meal, below.

All pics/quotes, House & Garden: Faringdon House, "The extraordinary story of Faringdon House: the Palladian gem immortalised in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love. The eccentric Lord Berners, the inspiration for the character Lord Merlin, unexpectedly left the house to the 25 year old writer Sofka Zinovieff. Here we revisit our April 2016 piece on the extraordinary story of this home as the BBC adaptation hits screens."

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

The Zen of Roadside Foliage: Carlos David

noreply@blogger.com (Tara Dillard) — Thu, 06 May 2021 16:24:00 +0000

Mundane subtlety hidden amongst the interior, below.

When so much is a one-trick-pony, hope you take this mundane subtlety into your home, and heart. This pony never disappoints.

What's the rabbit hole, below? THE STORY thread in all the pics?

Pic, above, here.

"Your thoughts create your world." Buddist

All I see, in every pic, above/below, are the MUNDANE ARRANGEMENTS.

Why mundane? Some are taken from invasive plantings, some from shrubs needing pruning, one is more formally 'normal', flowers.

Pic, above, here.

Myriad layers, dire subtlety, below. As if the greenery were still in its field, arching slightly in the breeze.

Pic, above, here.

Bought this neo-exact silver pitcher, below, to serve ice water, or hold side of the road clippings. From a local thrift store in Atlanta. One side engraved, North Shore Country Club, Glen Head, NY, 1st Flight 1952, Milton H. Raymond.

Pic, above, here.

Flowers, above, a 'solace of quiet' singing, talking, loving you, until they 'fold their miracle'. Whether you think so, or not.

Never done this throughout your home? Weekend almost here.

Gather your 'vases', source the pruners or kitchen scissors, a basket or bucket.

Remember a few things, things you already know. Perhaps never put into words to yourself.

".....and the closed bud shrugs off

its special mystery

in order to break into blossom

as if what exists, exists

so that it can be lost

and become precious." In Passing, by Lisel Mueller.

Best Use of Invasive Nandina, below.

Pic, above, here.

"There's a line in Walt Whitman's poem, 'Song of Myself' (1855) where he parenthetically says that he behaves no prouder than the level that he plants his house by. His level isn't performing Modesty, pretending like it's not as good as other, more expensive levels. Nor is it wrapped up in being better or more accurate than others. It just does its job without getting in its own way. At its best, modesty works the same way --- letting us do what we do well without all the comparative baggage. A fitting insight for a poem that starts with Whitman's intention to celebrate himself, but actually winds up celebrating everything and everyone else." N. Bommairito (sp.?)

More than modesty, and comparison, is the gift of sacrament, 'the infusion of grace', from Webster's 3rd International Dictionary.

Energies of calm, inspiration, love, and St. Julian of Norwich, "All will be well."

Clipping your bushes for a vase inside, instead of straight to the compost pile, is a sacrament, and knowing all will be well. In addition, bringing foliage inside your house is one of life's simple truths.

If you've never done this, get ready. You're going to receive much.

Jikan = 'silence between thoughts'

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

Carlos David Studio, pics, and interiors and arrangements.