Serenity in the Garden

courtesy : Green Jean blog Now is the time in the northern hemisphere when we itch to go out and start to turn the soil... Birds are chirping and we peek out to see if the robins have arrived.... Green Jean talks about this in her great garden blog, Green Jean .  The website, Dave's Garden ,  keeps a list of the top rated companies (by their readers) in their large database. If you are looking to buy garden plants these are some great sites to check out. And I want to add a favorite of mine: Comstock, Ferre and Co . to the list (The Dave's Garden site has them all with their websites linked in.) A Nearly Native Nursery Almost Eden Plants Annie's Annuals and Perennials Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co. Bluestone Perennials Brent & Becky's Bulbs Brushwood Nursery Chamblee's Rose Nursery Classy Groundcovers Diane's Flower Seeds Easy to Grow Bulbs Forestfarm Garden Crossings LLC Garden Harvest Supply...

The tree stumps say 'We are tree stumps torn out of the ground by men, sometimes by the wind, we have big tendrils full of earth that drink out of the earth'   - Jack Kerouac, 'Big Sur' Tree stumps are the remnants of a life. Strong, rooted and vibrant...a living memory of a place. Logs from these stumps should be polished, oiled and celebrated.... This is what the King of Thailand did when he halted the heavy logging that threatened to destroy Thailand's teak forests. He first replanted thousands of trees and created more than 100 teak farms and then offered dense and fine-grained teak trunks for sale. When polished with teak oil they develop a softly lustrous patina and are, indeed, living 'odes to a tree'. In the Celtic language, “trees” meant “letters,” and “Beech” was a synomym for “literature.” (Robert Graves) My course of study in tree stump 'poetry' began in a beech forest amidst ancient stumps and shady woods.... Working with a ...

Did you know that the native Eastern White Pine of the Northern U.S.was, in a sense, an inspiration for our consitution? The role of the Iroquois in the creation of the United States government has been largely overlooked but their Tree of Peace, the White Pine, was part of the great legacy they gave to our founding fathers. About 1000 years ago the tribes of what is now the Northern U.S. were mired in violent bloody feuds. According to the Native American legend, the Creator sent a spritual teacher, a Peacemaker, who appeared in the Finger Lakes region of New York to show the way to establish a higher order of human relations. He called all warring people together and said there must be a concerted effort by all for peace to prevail and through his Great Law and spiritual inspiration, he convinced the warriors of the five warring tribes to form a confederacy, a league of tribes.  His Great Law of Peace laid out a government "of the people, by the people and ...