The Tomorrow Trunk: Give Me a Garden

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Give Me a Garden

When David and I were first married, he asked me what I wanted for anniversary gifts. He asked me if I wanted flowers or diamonds or new clothes. I answered, "Give me a garden."

Since that day, he has probably built over a hundred flower beds. Once the beds are built, I do everything else; but the building is the hardest part. Not once has he ever refused. This past week, after a drought-ridden summer, we had the most beautiful shower of rain - not pounding or stormy, just polite and refreshing. Afterwards, I walked out to the garden that my husband had given me. The tall banana tree was covered in diamonds! Hundreds of raindrop diamonds situated exquisitely on a velvet canvas of kelly green. Never could I have worn anything so beautifully.

Dianne ; )

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The Portal of Now

Great photography is not just about having a good eye or the best camera. Taking an unforgettable picture is really more about being present with an unforgettable moment. Setting, composition, lighting and focus are all elements used to frame a technically perfected and edited shot; however, the intangible elements that create and capture the perfect moment ~ whether that moment is walk down the aisle or a walk on the beach ~ include perspective, point of view and personal connection.

Great photography is not about taking the specified amount of planned shots, placing them in an album and charging a fee. Great photography is capturing that one unplanned moment that is priceless ~ that single photo that everyone remembers and everyone else missed, usually because they were too busy crossing off a canned list of what's been done and what is left to do. The best photography happens as life happens ~ one frame at a time. Click, click, click!

The camera is simply the silent witness of the present moment. It is the instrument that not only takes us through the portal of now, but also preseves all the priceless treasures we bring back with us after the door of the moment is closed. In order to produce that one-of-a-kind photo, we simply have to have to embrace that irreplaceable moment. When we frame the moment instead of the picture, great photography is the result.

Dianne ; )

Refrigerator Quotes

For years, I posted special notes, sayings and quotes on our refrigerator. Words of wisdom. Words of praise. Words of encouragement. When we moved from the big house, all the refrigerator quotes ended up in a file folder. Years later, I was attending a children's conference, and I met another "quote collector". He said that we collect words the way that some people collect art. We do this because we value great arrangement of words like other people find enjoyment in the arrangement of colors, flowers, furniture, etc. "It is a gift," he said. ~~

If you miss the first buttonhole, you will not succeed in buttoning up your coat. ~~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sprache in Prosa~~

If books could have more, give more, be more, show more, they would still need readers, who bring to them sound and smell and light and all the rest that can't be in books. The book needs you. ~~ Gary Paulsen, The Winter Room ~~

Blues singer Robert Johnson raised everyday African folk life to a level of genius. He was an example of an artist who just absorbed out of the atmosphere what life is all about. ~~Shelby Foote, Southern historian~~

The Southern Renaissance of literature took place in the juke joint, in the fields, at the dinner table, on the front porch and in the powder room. The contrast between black and white, educated and ignorant, and the continual crossover between all those divisions is what blurred the picture of the south and yet gave it the legendary significance and resounding clarity. These storytellers were struck by a divine fire in a continual search for human understanding. ~~Voices of the South, a PBS documentary ~~

No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn. ~~Hal Borland~~

Maybe we could spend a moment at the end of each day and decide to remember that day ~ whatever may have happened ~ as a day for which to be grateful. In so doing, we increase our heart capacity to choose joy. ~~ Henri J. M. Nouwen ~~

If the end brings me out alright, what is said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference. ~~ Abraham Lincoln ~~

Oh, for a beaker full of the warm South...~~ John Keats~~

When challenge is present, the teacher is in the room. ~~ Anonymous~~

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders. ~~ Henry David Thoreau ~~

There is no purer form of blasphemy than self-pity. ~~Eckhart Tolle~~

The afternoon sun poured down on us through the drying grape leaves. The orchard seemed full of sun, like a cup, and we could smell the ripe apples on the trees. The crab apples hung on the branches as thick as beads on a string, purple-red, with a thin silvery glaze on them. ~~ Willa Cather, My Antonia ~~

"Packing and unpacking." my father said. "That's the motto of this family." ~~Author Frances Mayes, A Year in the World ~~

Keeping a record of your memories is like stringing scattered pearls. This painstaking process is necessary to protect their beauty and value. Otherwise, over a period of time, they are lost -one by one- until all that is left is an empty string. ~~ Tristine Rainer, Your Life as Story ~~

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. ~~Albert Einstiein~~

Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and the rough land, seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again. ~~Beatrix Potter ~~

The most important word is 'yet' - it is an open door to a world of opportunities. ~~Heather Forrest~~

"I wish there was such a place as fairyland ~ and a way to get to it," said Cecily.
"I think there is," said the Story Girl dreamily, "and I think there is a way of getting there, too, if only we could find it." ~~ L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl ~~

We are words on a journey, not the inscriptions of settled people. ~~ W.S. Merwin ~~

'Tis a good reader that makes the good book;...in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear. ~~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Society and Solitude ~~

The writer's life does not begin when she first puts words on paper; it begins when she recognizes with anticipation that her life is a story that demands to be told.~~Laura Ingalls Wilder~~

Somebody once said that everything you want in the world is just right outside your comfort zone. ~~Jennifer Aniston~~

You will find that it is all very familiar...the strange and faraway places where you've never been. The wild unknown leads you to a place just around the corner. Take a picture when you get there...the road is you. ~~Elizabethtown, 2005, travel scrapbook; lyrics from a fictitious song entitled The Road by J. Bebe and R. Hammond~~

The fouler a language gets, the less civility that culture possesses. ~~20/20 report by John Stossel~~

The worst curse in life is to be a talented and creative woman. ~~Ursula Nordstrom~~

A bird does not sing because it has the answer. It sings because it has a song. ~~Chinese Proverb~~

Things happen to you in your life because of choices. Choice after choice after choice puts everybody in the seat they are sitting in right now. ~~ Oprah Winfrey ~~

If children can learn to read, they can survive bad teachers. If they don't learn to read, they stay behind the eight-ball all of their lives. ~~Colleen Salley~~

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand and melting like a snowflake. Let us use it before it is too late. ~~Marie Beyon Ray~~

A whole stack of memories will never equal one little hope. ~~Charles M. Schulz/ Snoopy~~

Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color. ~~W.S. Merwin "Separation"~~

If we could have but one generation of properly born, trained, educated, healthy children, a thousand other problems of government would vanish. ~~Herbert Hoover~~

The good and the wise live quiet lives. ~~Euripides~~

The formula for complete happiness is to be very busy with the unimportant. ~~A. Edward Newton~~

"The horror of that moment," the King went on, "I shall never, never forget!"
"You will, though," the Queen said, "if you don't make a memorandum of it." ~~Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass ~~

A man's style is his mind's voice. ~~Ralph Waldo Emerson ~~

Conflict is what middles are made of. ~~Dwight V. Swain ~~

We shouldn't fear failure; we should fear success at the wrong thing! If you fail, make sure you fail at the right thing! Don't be afraid! ~~ Julia Child~~

He deserves my silence. ~~ President George W. Bush, after Barack Obama was elected President ~~

Even so, as I sit on my bed and pull off my stockings and rub my fifty-two year old toes, I think that I, too, have done the thing I least wanted to do; that I have given my children the two cruelest gifts I had to give, which are these, the experience of perfect family happiness, and the certain knowledge that it could not last. ~~ Quote from Ordinary Love by Jane Smiley ~~

There's the gift, there's the spirit and there's the work - all three have to come together. If one of those things is off, it can stop you from becoming who you were meant to be. ~~ Jay-Z, in an interview with Oprah ~~

Beauty - that perfection in the sensuous order, and by extension, in the spiritual order, which excites admiration or delight for itself rather than for its uses. ~~ Merriam-Webster's Unabridged New International Dictionary ~~

Most people live in a straight jacket of their own making because they are terrified to fail. Rock bottom is liberating! The happiest man alive looks in the mirror and sees himself exactly as he is. ~~ Author J.K. Rowling ~~

To be free from debt is considerably better than having nothing. ~~ Simon Cowell ~~

I've always lived my life as if I were taking down shorthand dictated by someone else. Words should not be turned into squiggly little things like bugs to be squashed on a page. ~~ Quote from Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums ~~

All I know is that as long as the Lord is with me, I like my chances! ~~ Matt McLaurin ~~

I need you to take responsibility for the energy that you bring into my situation. ~~ Jill Bolte Taylor, neuroanatomist ~~

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Give Me a Garden

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