image courtesy: Better Homes and Gardens. Click picture for link

It’s not a picket fence, but it’s white and it looks like the perfect garden of her mind’s eye. Images she has deep in her psyche of the ideals set forward in her youth of what it is to be successful and happy. Especially the woman watering by hand. The slow life. The life well lived. Time to smell the roses, so to speak.

In her last post, Canning and Freezing, she posted another image:

This one is of a small dwelling in the midst of what appears to be a permaculture type of gardening style. Ms. SpoolTeacher is trying to accomplish this; and even with a limited property, this is possible.

Living in a desert poses some obstacles that are trying at best. She’s trying her best to create what she calls “micro-climates”. In other words, ways of cooling the air so evaporation doesn’t exact its harsh torture any more than she has to let it. She is letting indigenous trees sprout and grow  and only removes them when it is clear they will have a negative rather than positive effect. They grow like weeds, offer plenty of leaves as they are deciduous. They don’t release themselves from the ground without a fight and that is why they are so worthwhile if they don’t overtake the strategy she has in mind. They grow without any attention at all and need no additional water. They grow straight up and in stands if you let them. A lot of her neighbors abhor them. She has grown fond of them.

But there is nothing that is as rewarding in gardening then that something you do makes someone or something else happier than they were.

“Thanks Mom for making me a dirt pillow and a cool place to lay.” Sweet Little Old Red-Haired Girl deserves to have everything exactly the way it makes her happy. She is a senior and we want no regrets.

The birds and the bees, and the flowers and the trees….

And a thing called Love.