The Gardens of the Aunts

This summer and each of the past four, has offered me along with my parents, a chance to travel into the mid-western states. Twenty something years ago we all lived there, my parents siblings still do, so we visit. My aunts, my mother's sisters, three of them, are in Southern Illinois. My uncles, my father's brothers, two of them, are in the Chicago area and Indianapolis.

Summer's in Florida don't provide the right conditions for flower gardens, but Summer in the mid-west is ideal for these little gems cut out of the kind of green grass lawns that stain little boys knees, to flourish. Each of my aunts plan and care for gardens they can be proud of and enjoy sharing with the appreciative.

Of course, in my appreciation I make sure to have my camera battery fully charged, always at the ready for whatever may suit my picture taking fancy.

I have countless pictures of the pristine hot-house grown flowers we process and arrange for elaborate events while at my Design Studio job at home, and am indeed impressed with their outstanding perfect beauty. Somehow though, to see flowers bravely battle the natural elements and rise proud and strong, strutting their stuff, my appreciation is increased.

Especially beautiful to me are the wild flowers that push up along road sides and unmowed fields. Close-up pictures of tiny flowering weeds intermingled amongst grasses reveal the same impressive detail as their full sized intentionally grown relatives in purposeful gardens.

It is a little bit like going home as the familiar comes gradually into view the further north we travel. Seeing dandelions gone to seed, I remember the little girls who picked them to blow their seeds to the winds, like they do with freshly dipped bubble wands. I remember those little girls pulling the tight purple clover petals from their center to nibble on the sweet inside ends. That seems so silly to me now. How did we ever think to do that? Those little girls also knew that a buttercup placed under the chin revealed if the person whose chin it was under liked butter, determined on said chin by the yellow reflection created on a sunny day. Of course cloudy days would render the experiment unreliable. Wild white daisy's for he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not, are still plentiful. How many have been pillaged by little girls since the days when I myself was one of them? Queen Ann's lace and Black Eyed Susan's feel like home, and childhood.

I searched for horse tails, the variety that grew along the railroad ties lining the tar tab driveway to Grandpa and grandma's house. I only spotted them as they waved in the breeze along country highways to us as we passed at sixty miles and hour, never where I could stop to freeze them in pictures. I will try again one day.

Everything that blooms colorful here in Florida is prickly and thorny. Bromeliads, Bougainvillea, and Crown of Thorns look nice, but trim and prune and bear scars to prove it! It's a fair trade though. Floridians enjoy Pansy's, Petunia's and Begonia's when the gardens of the aunts sleep under thick blankets of snow.

My preference is forever here, but going back there is roots, and it still feels like home.

Sparkle Mountain

The mountain sparkles.

Spring Maid Mountain could be an outdoor girls best friend with her red clay and rocky terrain that appears to be laden with diamonds. Mica and mica dust are inlaid and sprinkled on everything. From sparkly gray gravel one lane roads, to trickling waters of deep mountain gully's cut along those roads and hiking trails, the result of an unusually rainy summer, to small glittering rocks, large slabs, and every size stone in between. Even shoe bottoms carry the glittering particles into the entry of our mountain cabin home.

From our porch in the tree tops one afternoon, sun shone through branches lighting a small area between rails. The only reason I even noticed was that my peripheral vision perceived a glint and glimmer. I do love sparkle and my eyes rarely miss its invitation! Turning for closer inspection I was charmed to clearly see the tiniest weaving of threads sprinkled with that same magical mica dust, transforming the home of an otherwise unnoticeably minute arachnid into a diminutive palace. There all along, but a treasure kept secret if not for that brief ray of sunshine through the dense leaves of our forest home's shady porch. The web and its builder lifted and fell, fluffed by a cool mountain breeze as it sparkled like a jeweled brooch on the Chanel lapel of a rich lady. This Spring Maid of the mountains was donned in a truly dazzling natural beauty.

These are the diamonds that need not be faceted by a jewelers tools. Only the sunshine daily taken for granted beaming through holes in the forest canopy for the eyes of respite seekers is required to showcase these gems, always there, too often unseen.

In the quiet, leaves near the tree tops raise a raucous at the prompting of a mountain summer breeze. Birds whistling, bees buzzing too close for the comfort of ears, a squirrel jumping through branches and an occasional locust chime in with their own Spring Maid Mountain forest notes. Civilization is not too far away as a cars tires press and flick on the sparkly gray gravel road and a distant train horn sounds indicating that this solitude we have found here in the woods, invites others.

There are bigger cities than the one we have come from, there are deeper woods than the one we have come to, still for us the contrast is measurable. It can be weighed by lighter schedules and heavy pocketfuls of rocks. It can be counted by days that blend together in forgetfulness of time. It can drain empty a camera battery and fill full it's memory card. It is the slowed paces in wild places unclouded by narrowed vision. The lucky few in rare stingy moments, trade in demanding over-crowded clamor and mind-numbing rubbish continually in-put, for the unpolluted, for that which is still unspoiled and still sparkles. They, we, come to the glittering mountain that every day sparkles but for these few days, sparkles for us, for me.

 North Carolina's Spring Maid Mountain is a gem. Her treasures are in plain sight of anyone whose eyes are open to them. She is inlaid with diamonds and their glitter is sprinkled over all of her surfaces like magic fairy dust,

and I,

am enchanted.

  
P.J.