I took this pic around 12/14/07.
Here it is today in all its shaggy, messy glory. The branches are so laden with flowers they were blocking access to the front door. The holiday season is not a good time to block access to the mailbox. Especially when the bees are buzzing around the flowers like mad.
So, even in the midst of the Great Paperwork Project plus the Scrap Metal and Other Important Endeavors - it was time for my baby to get a trim. Here's how it looks from the driveway, next to the house.
I wish you could smell them.
At night, opening the front door, here's what I saw.
It's okay for me to have to duck around the branches. I don't mind, and I know how to be careful around bees. But it was a bit unwelcoming to others, so I went at it, and it's under better control now. I mean, you can sort of see the house again.
I don't care how much of a mess it makes, or how bad it looks when the leaves are all chewed up and yellowed. I love my orchid tree and I always will.
4 comments:
When I clicked on the last photograph, I actually did get a faint whiff of sweetness. What a miraculous tree! It is just like you!
now THAT is a robust example of life in all its glory.
i am just blown away!!!
you have literally changed the 'face' of your earth. i look at all of the brick-laying, mulch...EVERYTHING....and, i just do not see 'how' you do this.
you are an amazing woman, k...just absolutely amazing!!!
Pretty Lady, I wondered if maybe you would. And sense the velvety softness of those huge petals.
I feel quite an affinity for that tree. Right down to the way we both get chewed up and messy, but we can still clean up pretty nice.
nancy, I really, really, really wanted to get you some gardening pix! Asked and answered, my fellow zipper.
We don't really get fall down here, or winter either of course. We just change over to a different growing season. Time to plant the veggies and all. Time for the orchid trees to bloom.
I'm so glad you liked that tree. It's such a paragon of why we garden, it just explodes with lust for life.
betsye. I was about one hour away from sending out a search message for you. It's good to hear from you.
Having escaped a stressful childhood by dint of growing up - then came of age - then escaped a brutal early marriage - I slowly moved into taking control of my own environment.
It wasn't conscious at first and it was very slow. In my profile I say, *I own the space I live in - and I don't mean just my house...* What you discerned, there, is what I'm talking about with that phrase.
I don't get any sense of being a control freak about it, either. I like to shape it, but by working with it instead of telling it what to do, if that makes any sense.
The boxy bungalows we have here cry out for curves, so the meandering walkways just sort of fell into place. The woman next to me on the west side, an artist - all my adjoining neighbors are artists - had achieved a wonderful mellowing of her own rectangular structure that way. So of course I can't take any credit for the idea. I just noticed what it did for her house, and thought it was a good idea.
This all comes back to the concept of what we can control and what we can't - as well as, what we should control and what we shouldn't. I can control certain things like how I arrange my plants, but I can't control things like hurricanes. I should control my own life, but not the lives of others.
I'm adamant about my right to control my own life and self. Sometimes people find this offensive; some call it, being a control freak.
It shouldn't be either of those things. If I wanted to control others (excepting special situations like children), then yes, that's control freak behavior. But we have an absolute right to control our own selves and lives, and that should offend no one.
Those who think men have a right to control women for some reason? They are sometimes offended by my self-sufficiency. If I could be bothered by that sort of BS, their sense of entitlement to control others would offend me. It's not right, not moral, and certainly not loving. There you have a true *control freak* turning it around: calling the person who isn't one, the control freak. And that, simply for refusing to be controlled by another.
heh! This glaring lack of logic never seems to enter their poor atrophied minds.
It was a lot of work, the bricks and plants and mulch and digging. I was a lot healthier when I started. I'm pretty sure I couldn't repeat it today. Luckily, the big stuff is all finished.
And it was done for love and happiness, you see. So it's not amazing after all. It's just the actions of a person having fun and nesting, making a home. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who didn't enjoy it. Me, I'm lucky that way - I do. So I've had a blast working on this place.
It's not just the first house I ever bought. It's the only true home of my entire life.
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