Garden Gift

After all these years I finally have a hydrangea in bloom!

 The garden is looking amazing with all of ADR's focused work.  He has pulled poison ivey (the birds just love the danged stuff) and grapevines, and planted and mulched.  Flowers are blooming on both sides of the front walk and also in the side garden, and it is so wonderful!  It still has a rambling, wild, dense look that I love so much - random and full of energy.  But everything looks super healthy - better than it has in the last seven years - which is when I stopped gardening to travel for work.  Bah!

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I have been focusing on cleaning up inside, taking care of the absolute disaster that my art / craft space had become.  With work demanding time, I find that I so desperately want to make time for art that I just sit down and do it, and then never have the opportunity to clean up the resulting mess. And I am in the middle of a very cool art project right now, doing some work for a friend, so I really need the space.  So, I have been spending time digging through everything on the desk and floor, organizing like items into containers, labeling, filing.  It has been several weeks of this effort, and about two weeks ago I finally had a cleaner desk - enough that I could actually make space on top to work.  I found lots of cool things during this process - art supplies I didn't remember I had, little pieces of ephemera that I can use to make more art, interesting colors and stamps and brushes.  Buried treasure!  

Even now with the desk clean, there are things that sit all over the top of the desk - containers filled with paint brushes, big glass containers willed with tubes of acrylic paints, ceramic rectangular dishes to the brim with chalks.  I need all these things in easy reach when I am working (playing!) and I like the way they bring color to the desk.  I also have a super cool piece of bamboo that ADR gave me, filled with markers that I use for my envelope art.

ADR found this bamboo growing wild near his in-laws house.  No one wanted it, so he spent days with a machete out in the heat, cutting down long poles of bamboo.  Then he researched how to treat it so that it dried appropriately and cured the way it is supposed to, to make it strong.  He has used the bamboo to make a table and a really cool garden gate.  The piece that he gave me is about 4 and a half inches in diameter, and as tall as a coffee cup.  It is a beautiful subtle brown, and stronger than you might imagine.  I think that it is such a cool container - such a cool natural gift!  When I found the bamboo on my desk I was tickled and immediately made use of it for the markers. 

In passing the next day or so, I mentioned to ADR how cool my bamboo was that he had given me.

About a week later everyone came up for family dinner.  They were late in arriving and Mr. Bryant and I were out on the porch when they pulled up.  The kids hopped out of the car and came running for hugs and hellos, and SRR had a big smile and hug for us too.  ADR was carrying something and he said - I have a surprise for you mom.  Now, I am not usually much for surprises - but look at what this creative man brought to me.

Bamboo Garden Sculpture

 A one of a kind, hand made just for me, bamboo garden sculpture!  Made of six or seven pieces of bamboo and thick gauge copper wire, it is just so very good.  I am sure that it is excellent feng shui!  ADR installed it in the garden on Monday last, as you see it above.  He has big plans for mulch and flowers that will be planted all around to make it even more fabulous and more an integral part of the garden.

I feel very lucky and blessed to have creativity and beauty all around.  No wonder why I would rather be home than anywhere else!

Thank you dearest son.  I love my garden, and I love my sculpture.