Leesburg Oatlands Get-Together - December

All six of the Take Joy Society members were able to get together to celebrate Christmas in Leesburg, Virginia.  Edie, who had started off her married life here in 1972 showed us the downtown area.  

Leesburg was dressed up for Christmas. . . .

Surreybrooke House/Garden Tour Get-Together

This month's Take Joy Society get-together was to tour Ron and Nancy Walz's  civil-war-era house and personal garden at Surreybrooke on the Open Days Tour sponsored by the Garden Conservancy.  Open Days features private gardens throughout the country.  There may be one in your area, so check the Garden Conservancy link above.  Unfortunate for the others, Cindy and I were the only one's able to make it today.  We got to see the modern addition as well as the original part of the house. This is looking back down the walk we came up to get to the new addition.  In the distance is the mountain range I live on.  You will see Catoctin Mountain in the background in many of the photos. . . .

Northern Neck Virginia House & Garden Get-Together

Edie invited the Take Joy Society members to her vacation home on the Northern Neck of Virginia so that we could go on the Northumberland County House & Garden tour during Virginia's Historic Garden Week.  There were four of us in all who were able to get away for three days and two nights.  Unfortunately photos were not permitted inside the houses, but I will be telling you a bit of their history.

We set out in the rain mid-morning on Tuesday. . . .

Surreybrooke Garden Tour Get-Together

This month several members of the Take Joy Society met at Surreybrooke for a garden tour and picnic.  Surreybrooke has been in operation since the late 1970s when Nancy Walz began her business at craft fairs selling handmade candles and dried-flower wreaths from homegrown everlasting flowers.  When I moved here in 1981 I made yearly visits as she began to grow her business by selling plants next to her house.  As she expanded her flower beds on their farm I could always go there to get ideas for my garden and buy perennials and annuals you don't usually find at Lowes or Home Depot.  Over the years they have added four greenhouses,  reconstructed salvaged log cabins to house garden-themed merchandise, and built buildings like the Pavilion to host weddings and other events.

The tour started at the Pavilion where we'd have our picnic afterwards. I'd brought along a tablecloth and had small pots of succulents for Edie and Chris from my garden so I was surprised to find the tables were already set with quilted tablecloths and pots of succulents! . . . .

Midsummer's Day

Today is Midsummer's Day.  I wrote about Tasha Tudor's Midsummer's Eve celebration earlier in the month.  Sarah Ban Breathnach wrote about Tasha's festivities also in her book "Simple Abundance," then goes on to tell us how she, herself, celebrates Midsummer's Day. . . .

I wander out into the backyard very early in the morning and pluck a blossom from the garden heavy with dew.  With my fingers, I’ll pat the dew upon my face, for legend has it that any woman who washes her face in the dew of Midsummer’s Day will grow more lovely with the passing year.  Fairy cakes are made for tea, midsummer’s syllabub (a delightful concoction of cider, lemon, berries, and whipped cream) is prepared for a moonlit picnic, and personal dreams are renewed.

I think it's a lovely idea to find reasons to celebrate the seasons.  There was a time when Summer was all about children home for school vacation, finding activities and trips to keep them busy and enrich their young lives.  Now Summer is about enjoying my garden.  Things are growing and therefore my garden must be tended:  weeding, watering, fertilizing, deadheading.  But I also take time to just enjoy it. . . . .the fragrance of Lavender as I harvest it. . . .

The sight of daisies and evening primroses rioting together. . . .

Climbing roses creating bowers over my garden path. . . .

Hearing the high-pitched croak of the frog as I startle him back into the pond when I draw too close. . . .

But I think one of the most joyful beauties of the place where I live is the sun filtering through the tree tops. . . .

Anne Shirley in "Anne of Avonlea" says it best. . . .

I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls sipping off a string. 

May you find Joy in every day!


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Take Joy!

June Celebrations

The Rose is June's flower according to Mary Mason Campbell's "The New England Buttr'ry Shelf Almanac", illustrated by Tasha Tudor.  She tells us that according to Mrs. Burke's book, "The Coloured Language of Flowers", compiled in a much earlier era, that a white rose and red rose together signified unity and that a yellow rose meant jealousy.

Here is her simple recipe for Rosewater. . . .

"Collect a pound of scented rose petals and put them in a heatproof glass, enamel, or pottery pan on the fire.  Cover petals with water and bring to a boil, then simmer gently for 10 minutes.  Strain off the water.  May be used for bathing the face and arms on a warm day--very refreshing.  It is best bottled and kept ice cold in the refrigerator."

My roses are coming into bloom.  I bought this climbing rose in 2014.  This is the first year for it to bloom.  It turns out to have a pinkish hue, which I love. . . .

White Ramber (Felicite et Perpetue)

Eden Climber (Meiviolin)

Rainbow Knockout (Radcor)

Carpet Rose

This is my Mystery Rose that showed up in the middle of my Azalea

One of the many wild roses--this one growing up into the Dogwood to continue the white flowers after the Dogwood is out of bloom

Tasha was very fond of roses.  When she died in 2008 half of her ashes were scattered, as she requested, under her favorite rose bush.  The other half were scattered where one of her Corgi's had been buried.

For Tasha Tudor June was the beginning of summer fun starting with Midsummer's Eve as told in "A Time to Keep". . . .

In "Around the Year" Tasha shares her delicate borders of flowers surrounding summer scenes. . . .

Tasha wrote about celebrating Midsummer's Eve in "The Private World of Tasha Tudor". . . .

"Just for fun, my family invented a religion like the Shakers we called Stillwater.  I'm eldress, and we have a big celebration on Midsummer's Eve.  It's really a state of mind.  Stillwater connotes something very peaceful, you see, life without stress.  Nowadays, people are so jeezled up.  If they took some chamomile tea and spent more time rocking on the porch in the evening listening to the liquid song of the hermit thrush, they might enjoy life more......Life is to be enjoyed, not saddled with.  Do you know that lovely quotation from Fra Giovanni?  He was an old monk from away back who wrote to his patron, 'The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within our reach is joy.  Take joy.'  That's the first commandment of the Stillwater religion.  Joy is there for the taking."

I feel drawn to Tasha's porch. . . .

Photo credit:  Richard Brown

Do you have a porch on which to sit and listen to the birds sing?  A place where you can collect your thoughts and enJOY all your blessings?

How do you celebrate Midsummer's Eve?


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Take Joy!

May Celebrations

Mary Mason Campbell writes in "The New England Butt'ry Shelf Almanac," illustrated by Tasha Tudor:  "May Day has been celebrated merrily for many ages, from fertility festivals of the ancient Egyptians, and feasts of the Romans in honor of their goddess Flora, to the Middle Ages when the people of the British Isles danced about Maypoles.  The English decked their villages with flowers and danced in the streets with gay abandon, greatly encouraged by enthusiastic drinking and feasting.  In New England the first settlers, the Pilgrims, did not believe in such pagan festivities, and there was no thought of celebrating May Day until one boisterous Thomas Morton set foot on the shores of Boston Bay.  He and his crew set up a Maypole on May Day 1627, celebrating their arrival with dancing and other raucous revelry.  The Maypole is said to have been a pine tree eighty feet tall wreathed with wild flowers, vines, and ribbons and adorned with poems especially composed for the occasion.  The merriment shocked Governor Bradford and his Puritan followers.  Further celebrations of May Day in New England were abandoned until the nineteenth century when children played at dancing around the Maypole and renewed the old, old custom of filling May Baskets with flowers and candies for their friends."

Tasha Tudor recalls in "A Time to Keep" her family's dancing around the maypole and delivering May Baskets to neighbors. . . .

May was also a time to plant her garden. . . .

A time to finally be out of doors enjoying elevenish parties under the trees. . . .

In Tasha's "Around the Year" she shows us more idyllic scenes from her life and imagination. . . .

I love this time of year because my garden is beginning to blossom.  This year my Lilac bush, which has grown into a tree these past eight years finally has several blooms.  The Dogwood is in full bloom, too. . . .

As are the Azaleas. . . .

May is when my first child was born after waiting ten very long years for him. . . .

Gabriel shares his birthday in May. . . .

In the U.S. we celebrate Mother's Day in May as well.  My mother will have been gone now for 22 Mother's Days this year. . . 

What special occasions do you celebrate in May?

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Take Joy!

The Joy of Gardening

If you are a gardener and live where there are four seasons, you're probably like me in February--itching to get your hands in dirt.  Along about now I find myself longing for color.  It helps if there is snow on the ground to cover all the brown, but after a while that doesn't even help.  So this morning I found myself looking through my Photo Library where I collect the photos I've taken of my garden through the years. . . .
I planted my first garden when my youngest was two.  He would be my last child and I knew that nurturing a garden would help me let go of my children as they grew up and left home.  Over the last 26 years I've dug, and hauled, and planted, and weeded.  I've enjoyed walking through others' gardens to get ideas and perusing garden centers for plants.  Each year I look forward to Spring when the perennials begin to poke through the earth again.  I'm eager to discover what has made it through the winter.  Some do not survive, but this gives me an opportunity to start over.

Designing my garden beds is intuitional for me.  This is the part of gardening I love the most.  It allows me to express my own sense of beauty--putting textures and colors together.  But, like life, gardening has it's struggles.  Sometimes it can be disheartening when after a beautiful Spring, Summer brings heat and humidity to decimate my garden.  Colors fade, leaves shrivel, then the bugs and powdery mildew have a field day!

This is why I take photos.  They remind me, like memories, of the best part of gardening and give me hope for Springtime. . . .

                      

For best viewing, click right corner for full-screen

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Take Joy!