Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Tonight's picture was taken in May of 2007. Mattie was out on our deck and playing in his sandbox. With Mattie's imagination, play was never ordinary or boring! With him anything was possible and as you can see he was using the cover of his sandbox as a boat. In his boat he was fishing! He got out Peter's fishing rod and instead of trying to catch fish, he was fishing for sand toys! The irony is, if you visit us now, this sandbox still exists and many of the toys you see inside of it can be found still within the box.






Quote of the day: Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. ~ George Bernard Shaw



Peter and I had a slow start to the day. Since I knew rain was coming, I was motivated to finish up Ellen's garden this morning. Peter and I went outside together and I can safely say we are almost finished with this new creation. We have had several of Ellen's neighbors stop and admire the flower colors and chat with us over the course of the past couple of days, which make us feel good and proud of the gift we are leaving our friends.

Each neighbor is intrigued by who we are and how we are connected to Ellen. In fact that is the first question asked of us. I imagine such a simple question deserves an equally simple answer. Which we provide, and spare the details. After all, how do you explain to an unsuspecting soul that we are friends with Ellen and are connected through our children? Mattie loved Ellen's daughter, Charlotte, and as my faithful readers know, Mattie even gave Charlotte a plastic engagement ring he got at his dentist's office for a good cleaning.

This morning Ellen called me and we chatted for a while. She let me know that our mutual friend Christine will be visiting her this weekend at the beach house. Christine's son is Campbell. Mattie, Charlotte, and Campbell were quite a threesome in kindergarten. In fact, if you asked Charlotte, she was pretty sure that she and her two friends were going to college together and sharing a dorm room. Ellen has asked us to stay this weekend so we can be reunited as friends. This is a very thoughtful invitation, since in so many ways, without Mattie my ability to do things with my friends has also ended. We nor longer travel in the same social circles or are united around school and educational issues. Needless to say this call meant a lot to me and yet I am also sensitive to the fact that seeing Charlotte and Campbell with each other this weekend is not an easy sight for me, and I also know it isn't easy for my friends either. I know Ellen and Christine feel the loss of Mattie and they know how this loss has impacted their children. I don't have to guess about these issues, since they fortunately verbalize these thoughts with me.

I snapped a couple of pictures of the garden that I wanted to share with you. As so many of you know, gardening has and is one of my many forms of therapy. Unlike some of my other gardens however, this one was a joint creation by Peter and I.

I planted Ellen's baskets on her deck, and naturally couldn't help but incorporate orange gerbers. I love gerber daisies. To me they are a happy flower and they remind me of a child's face smiling. Of course, orange is one of Mattie's colors, and I incorporate a Mattie reminder in ALL my gardens!

This is an overhead view of the flower beds we nurtured and planted. For days we studied neighbors' gardens and gardens around town. We wanted a feel for what grew and was hardy by the sea. The answers: hydrangeas, roses (of all things!!), grasses, and portaluca.

Here is a close up of one of the flower beds. This bed is filled with daisies, gaura, roses, and portaluca. Within these beds we also integrated three copper sprinklers. I tried to take a close up of this one, which features a sea turtle. Mattie LOVED sea turtles and had one adopted for him by this preschool. Mattie tracked Roxana on the Internet and was very proud to say he had his "own" sea turtle. So this is another Mattie feature within this garden.

There are three copper sprinklers here, one is in the shape of a turtle, the second is in the shape of a fish, and the third is in the shape of a flower. When the sprinklers go off, they twirl and really provide quite a show.

Peter loves roses and planted these three beauties. Around the roses, I planted moss roses (otherwise known as portaluca). Each day, we have robins and bunnies that come to the garden. Since I consider the robin, a gardener's helper or friend, I think this says volumes about the garden. In addition, yesterday afternoon, we had a hummingbird grace us with his presence in the orange gerber flower basket. So it is a pleasure to see nature all around us and we love hearing the birds singing and flying all around us.

This evening, as we went for our walk, I figured we wouldn't see many bunnies since the ground was soaked from a day full of rain. However, here was one of our first sightings. I entitle this photo....."Caught in the act!"

This cutie is a baby bunny! It maybe hard to tell but this bunny could literally fit in the palm of my hand. No evening is complete for me without a bunny sighting!