day 45 ~ the forgotten garden

Mine are vivid dreams.

When I sleep I often visit dream houses, homes of mine outside of time and space. There are a handful of these homes and visits to them are sporadically spread, sometimes with years in between.

Still, despite the passage of time, I recognize them immediately. Usually there is work to be done and I get right to it, so happy to be back.

Many years ago during one such astral visit, I was busying myself with a wide variety of indoor chores and happened to step outside to discover a long forgotten garden in my backyard.  It was a forlorn and desolate place covered in thin patches of ice and littered with trash. I was so sad to see it and set to work immediately to clean it up. As I worked, I admonished myself for having forgotten my garden and for having allowed it to fall to such ruin. I continued working my way along the bed, moving steadily to my right, where much to my surprised delight I found another garden! This one also needed some loving attention but was in much better shape than the one preceding it. Even in the icy, poor conditions a strangely beautiful plant still grew. It struck me as being quite alien, looking very much like a large onion growing atop a tall, healthy stem. Its uniqueness and persevering beauty filled me with hope and enthusiasm.

A month or so ago, Madonna over at The Happy Homemaker, posted an invitation for mass collaboration for a little March Mix-It-Up Madness fun. Her suggestion was that we all post an image or a template on February 24^th (today) that others can use to create their own piece to be posted in March.

So, I’ve been thinking about this ever since I first read about the idea, but still even now at the time of this writing (4:29 p.m.) have no idea what I am going to post for the sharing.

Instead, I’ve been having a hard time putting down the new book I began reading last night: “The Forgotten Garden” by Kate Morton.  Every spare moment I’ve found between chores today, I’ve stuck my nose inside this book. Part fairytale, part mystery, part history lesson, so what’s not to love?

But guess what? There’s no tree in those pages for me to share as a collaborative offering!

To pry myself away from reading “just one more page”, I had to promise myself that even without an idea for a tree, I could follow this breadcrumb trail of inspiration and at least share the dreamy recollections of forgotten gardens all awhirl within this mind of mine.

Now that that’s done, I suppose I need to go see what I can come up with in regards to roots, trunks, branches and leaves…

~*~

I'm back. This is what I came up with. I couldn't decide which one to post, so I'm posting both:

If you would like to join in on the March Mix-It-Up Madness, please feel free to use one of these images, add your own 365 project to create a new image, link back to this post when you share the collaboration and provide a link to your creation in the comments below.

However, if you're not sure how to use the image, you could always incorporate the theme "The Forgotten Garden". I'm always up for a good story. Just imagine what fun Ralph and Roger That could get up to in such a place. :)

music ~ Enya "Fairytale"

images ~ misha