The little boat sits on the window sill loaded for departure with a thick twig pencil. It floats on gauzy waves while out the window sunlight slips through the leaves and illuminates the distant shore. It’s June in the garden, and I’m lulled into dream time. Ideas evolve; it can be hard to find balance between the need to stay rooted in our goals and the need to go with the flow of new ideas.
I was loaded right up with goals when I sat down with my notes beside me, but somehow I’ve been transported into the garden. The waterfall plays my favorite songs, as usual, and I watch fish swim amongst the iris, and, yes, those iris are only reflections.
What is this enchantment and where is it leading? I won’t find out if I keep to my plan. In gardening terms, I need to decide whether to weed out this new concept or to water it. I will follow my impulse for dream time and put the other ideas back in the pond. I can fish them out another day.
Am I slacking or stilling the water so as to be aware of what bubbles up to the surface from the unconscious? Please share your views.
Join me in the garden next Sat., June 11 for Plein Air Without Fear (watercolor and gouache). $75. Call Stephen at Open Studios for more information 303-444-1862. We will also go out into the Open Space.
All photos from our garden on June 6.
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Lilly,
…I’m dreaming already! …
Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering. ~Steven Wright
Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in reverie. ~Henry David Thoreau
You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it. ~Neil Gaiman
It is a good idea to be alone in a garden at dawn or dark so that all its shy presence may haunt you and possess you in a reverie of suspended thought. ~James Douglas
If you’ve never stared off in the distance, then your life is a shame. ~Adam Duritz, “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby,” performed by Counting Crows
“Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high, There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby” – Lyman Frank Baum
I walked through this garden yesterday, saw the iris, heard the stream cascade…I looked for the exquisite red poppy from last year, and wondered if it had bloomed? What a great afternoon, learning to draw horses and then to paint one in acrylic no less!
Deep appreciation to you Lillian.
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