Snow O's

Snow is sagging on my arbor in a rare and delicate way, forming an upside down semicircle and looking like giant peppermint lifesavers. An hour later, they are gone.

Every moment is this rare and fragile. Can i drop into the beauty of Now? Now.

Beech Arbor

My sweetie surprised me with the gift of an arbor on my private path to the vegetable garden. He sawed off twin beech trees on opposite sides of the path at about 8 feet up. Then he twined their branches together to make the arbor.

This natural arbor is especially sweet since we "married" each other under another natural arbor on Havasu Creek at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with only mountain goats as witnesses several years ago.

An arbor is a gateway, our entrance into another place, another state of mind, another intention. Committing to a spiritual path is an entrance to holiness. What's yours?

Havasu Creek in the Grand Canyon

Wedding Flowers

Alison from Floral Artistry

My sweetie, whose right leg is still in a brace after emergency knee surgery 5 weeks ago, played his keyboard for a wedding at the Grafton Inn yesterday. When we arrived early in order to get him set up, Alison, the florist, was at work on the wedding arbor.

So beautiful. And so temporary. The bride throws her bouquet. We could say "throws it away." The flower girls litter the aisle with rose petals and leave their baskets sitting in the grass.

The piano plays. The wedding begins.  The wedding ends.

Impermanence.
The music is gone. The wedding is gone. The flowers are gone.

Morning Glory Children

Morning glories are clambering over my arbor, their heart-shaped leaves a charming green background to the intense blue, pink, and purple flowers. Mixed in among them are a few Venice blue and Venice pink for contrast.

All these morning glories are volunteers, children of previous generations of morning glories. The line from a song in The Fantasticks goes,

"Plant a radish,

get a radish,

not a Brussel sprout."

In my garden, it's plant a morning glory one year; get dozens of morning glories next year.

We, too, have to plant and tend the qualities we want--kindness, patience, generosity, caring.

My cousin, Nadine, tries to be nice to me, even though i consistently annoy her. She's nice to me. Then something i do or say sets her off and breaks through her veneer of niceness. Maybe she thinks she's being nice by correcting me or by being critical? There. That should help me do it properly next time.

What if she practiced kindness instead of niceness?

We are not going to grow kindness by planting nice-ness. Maybe we won't grow too many friends by planting our opinions and critical comments either.

As one woman in the county jail said yesterday, "I can't slap every mouthy teenager. Otherwise, i'd be in jail for the rest of my life. Now I pause before reacting. The other women here on the block, even women who i didn't like at first, have started to like me."

Plant a pause before reacting. Pausing can be the first step to creating a beautiful mind.

Venice Pink & Venice Blue

A Beautiful Arbor Ages

Several years ago i saw an arbor at the garden center, but before i could commit to buying it, it had disappeared. Oh darn. I had especially liked the sunrise pattern on the sides--a half-circle of wood with thin, wooden slats of sun rays radiating out to the uprights. The sun had set on the opportunity to buy that beautiful arbor. Sigh.

The following Wednesday morning, i went to writing group, and there stood the arbor. Margot had bought it! I came over a few days later and took measurements and photos. Then i went to the local fencing company and asked the owner to make me such an arbor. Two arbors, in fact, plus 4 sections of fencing with a sunrise pattern. Eventually the job was completed and installed on summer solstice.

Now i'm in the Wednesday morning writing group again, sitting outdoors at the picnic table and looking at Margot's arbor. A pink rose has clambered over the top, each flower's simple 5 petals gazing at the morning sun that shines warmly on them this June morning.

I also see that 5 or 8 of the wooden sun rays on either side of the arbor have pulled out of the weather-worn gray suns, like broken spokes of an old wagon wheel.

The entire arbor stands somewhat off-balance, as if gravity is pulling it toward the east. In 10 years, this arbor has aged from shiny, smooth, brown to dull, rough, gray. Its youthful beauty still imaginable through its cracked age.

We too are of the nature to grow old and gray, our bones thinning, not visibly and only noticed in the triennial bone density scan. We too begin to favor one leg due to painful knee or hip joints.

Those who love us look deeply and still see us as beautiful. Those new to our acquaintance simply see graying hair and wrinkled face. They may notice the creping of the skin on our arms, and our general unshapeliness, as if gravity has pulled breasts down to belly and everything else down to hips.

If someone bought this house tomorrow, they'd throw the arbor on the brush pile and burn it to a pile of ashes.

A pile of ash or dust is what our own bodies will turn into. The life of our original material form mere specks in the eons of cosmic dust.