Serenity in the Garden

Love the earth and sun and the animals. Despise riches, give alms to every one that asks.  Stand up for the stupid and crazy. Devote your income and labor to  others... Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” ― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

"Let it be admitted that the world’s problems are many and wearing, and that the whirlpool runs fast.  If we are to build a stable cultural structure above that which threatens to engulf us by changing our lives more rapidly than we can adjust our habits, it will only be by flinging over the torrent a structure as taut and flexible as a spider’s web, a human society deeply self-conscious and undeceived by the waters that race beneath it, a society more literate, more appreciative of human worth than any society that has previously existed.  That is the sole prescription, not for survival — which is meaningless — but for a society worthy to survive." Loren Eiseley,   Firmament of Time For more excerpts from Loren Eiseley go here:  http://alexsheremet.com/8-great-passages-loren-eiseleys-firmament-time/

 a great internet radio show! I just had the nicest interview on an internet radio show with Christine Agro on Nature Speaks. We spoke about color and its effect on us and how to use it in a garden... It is a lot of fun! If you would like to hear us talk about color please click here:  Nature Inspired: Color in Nature, Color in the Garden We  talk about yellow, green and white and of course, blue .... also about Lakshmi gardens, the idea of a Venus garden...and the sparkle of a white garden.  Then Christine mentioned the most intensely colored fruit in Nature is Pollia condensata.  I did not know about it and so I looked it up... The berry is an intense blue and cannot be eaten by birds. It is shiny and keeps its color for a hundred years! The Pollia does not contain colored cells; instead, its cells are coiled in a twist and form sheets. When sunlight filters down through these layers of cellulose, the vast majority of the cells refl...