The Garden Museum ….. the U.K.

Spring Plant Fair 2023 Our Spring Plant Fair returns on Sunday 16 April!  This beloved specialist plant fair has been held at the Garden Museum for over 40 years, gathering expert plant growers and specialist nurseries from around the country to sell some of the best garden plants you’ll find in London. From shade specialists to plants for pollinators, meet the growers and they will help you pick something special that will flourish for whatever growing space you have available, be it a garden, window box, balcony or allotment. Stalls will include Beth Chatto Gardens, Moore & Moore Plants, Glendon Farm Nursery, and Nobottle Nursery. This year’s fair will also feature a programme of talks and activities curated by Susanna Grant, founder of Hackney-based shade specialist plant shop Hello There Linda. More details coming soon! Sun 16 April, 10am – 4pm £5 Standard, £4 Friends Book tickets The Wild Escape There’s a worm at the bottom of the garden… what else can we find outside? We are delighted to be taking part in #TheWildEscape with Art Fund and hundreds of other museums this year! The project unites schools, families and museums in a big celebration of UK wildlife and nature. Our project will explore science and art through school visits exploring the world of earthworms. Pupils will investigate the structure of earthworms using microscopes, and then make a small wormery to take back to school. The Garden Museum will also create our own wormery! And in February half-term and the Easter holidays, we will have family workshops creating two-dimensional creatures out of paper inspired by the wildlife we find in our gardens. These will be displayed as a collaborative artwork for Earth Day on 22 April, and on display until the end of May. Attend a workshop A History of Potted Plants By Giovanni Aloi, Curator Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits In 1939, Lucian Freud painted a stack of clay pots. At first glance, this is a simple and charming image. On the right is a potted prickly pear (opuntia). On the left is a small silvery pachyphytum. From the perspective of a plant lover, there isn’t much to see… The pads of the prickly pear are cropped by the picture frame—much of the plant is left out. It is not what Freud wanted to focus on. The pachyphytum looks unassuming and fragile in its tiny clay pot. Unusual in composition and even stranger in subject, this is one of the most overlooked paintings by Lucian Freud. But this is one of Freud’s most meaningful works, especially if considered in the context of his long-lasting determination to paint plants in a way that no other artist had previously done. Potted plants have a long history and yet western art has had a complicated relationship with them. It is known that clay and ceramic pots were widely used in India, Japan, China, and Korea over 3000 years ago, mostly to bring plants closer to houses and in courtyards rather than indoors. Terracotta plant pots have been found in the Minoan palace at Knossos on Crete. The Romans preferred to plant lemon trees in large marble pots. And throughout the Middle Ages, pots were used in convents to grow herbs as well as to keep life-saving medicinal plants close at hand. Keep reading The House of a Lifetime: Umberto Pasti and Ngoc Minh Ngo Last few tickets! Writer Umberto Pasti’s house and garden in Tangier is the ultimate example of a well-curated Moroccan villa, filled with museum-quality pieces of furniture, luminous textiles, rare tiles, ceramics, and other objets d’art; set in a lush hillside garden filled with the native flora of northern Morocco. To celebrate the launch of their new book The House of a Lifetime, Umberto and photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo are joined in conversation by garden designer Tania Compton. Tues 21 February, 7pm £20 Standard, £15 Friends, £10 Young Fronds / Students £10 Livestream Book tickets Object of the Week: Horticultural Basketware (1937) This advert for horticultural basketware was pubished in the catalogue for the Royal Horticultural Society’s ‘Great Spring Show’ in the Royal Hospital grounds at Chelsea in 1937. The baskets were produced by disabled soldiers at the Lord Robert’s Workshops in London, which were established in the 1890s to provide employment and training for injured servicemen. By 1920 there were eleven workshops producing goods such as baskets, toys and furniture. Explore our collection online Images: Spring Plant Fair 2022 (c) Graham Lacdao; Islington Back Garden by Susan Shipp  (c.1960), Garden Museum Collection; A hand-coloured woodcut print of a 16th century gardener from ‘The Herbal’ or ‘Krauterbuch’ by Adam Lonicer (Lonitzer); Umberto Pasti’s house (c) Ngoc Minh Ngo Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

IThis email was sent to contessashome@gmail.com why did I get this?    unsubscribe from this list    update subscription preferences Garden Museum · Lambeth Palace Road · London, London SE1 7LB · United Kingdom

Gardening Friends

Today we visited each of your garden spots. You didn’t know we came by….it was intentional because we came just to view the process of winter. It’s been a mild one so far and the growth and dying back process is about where it shouid be. We did do a few things at each property. With two more full months of winter likely, we are making notes and planning tasks and thinking about new ideas to introduce to each of you…….come spring

We are fighting flu like symptoms but a much needed outing helped us to fight off the chill and fever. We needed fresh air, space and some filtered sunlight. It seems we accomplished soaking up these attributes from our much needed outing. We are feeling somewhat better this evening. Hoping our chilled feelings and mild symptoms of winter flu are giving in slightly…..to the rest we have cherished and so needed over the last seven days. It’s our winter hibernation of sorts. Plain old fashioned rest.

We have made notes and have some ideas we will share with each of you as we get closer to spring. Mother Mature  certainly knows what she is doing…. and our brief respit is perhaps her intentional way of slowing us down. The earth is at rest and so are we.

And now we will sleep. And so will each of your properties also rest. And we can work out visions in our mind of “new” projects for each of you when spring arrives.

Good to be in touch and good to see your lovely spaces today. We will communicate individually with all of you between now and March 15th.

Do take good care….and be well  

“Contessa”

……OF SPECIAL INTEREST……THE GARDEN MUSEUM, the U.K.

Garden Museum Literary Festival 2023: Tickets available now! We are delighted to announce that the next Garden Museum Literary Festival will be held at Parham House, West Sussex on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 June 2023, hosted by Lady Emma Barnard and her husband, James. This boutique annual festival is Britain’s only travelling Literary Festival, with previous hosts including Chatsworth House (2022), Helmingham Hall (2021), and Houghton Hall (2019). Each venue provides a space over two summer days for us to celebrate the best in garden writing and to share what inspires us in gardens. Parham House is one of the country’s finest Elizabethan houses set at the foot of the South Downs in West Sussex. This beautiful place, with its award-winning gardens, has changed little over the centuries and remains a family home. The festival will include talks by some of the UK’s most influential and award-winning garden designers and authors, as well as opportunities to explore the magnificent historic gardens and house at Parham. Limited tickets available so don’t hesitate! Weekend Tickets (Friday and Saturday) Standard: £225 Friend: £190 Concession (Young Frond/Student/Unemployed): £95 Day Tickets Standard: £140 Friend: £120 Concession (Young Frond/Student/Unemployed): £60 The festival programme will be announced at a later date. Book tickets Images: Parham House photo by Elizabeth Zeschin; Parham Long Gallery with vine leaf pattern painted by Oliver Messel, photo by Jonathan Wilkinson

Copyright (C) 2023 Garden Museum. All rights reserved. You were subscribed to the newsletter from Garden Museum Our mailing address is: Garden Museum Lambeth Palace Road London, London SE1 7LB United Kingdom

THE GARDEN MUSEUM NEWS …the UK

Sow, Grow Eat A new programme for teenagers to explore horticulture and cooking Do you know any teenagers aged 13-17 based in South London who might be interested in dipping their toes in the career of a gardener, food grower or chef? We are looking for up to eight teenagers to join our free ‘Sow, Grow, Eat’ programme, which involves spending one Saturday a month at the Garden Museum for ten months. Participants will learn sowing, planting and gardening skills in our greenhouse and gardens, then in our studio kitchen we’ll do hands-on cooking sessions using some of the produce grown throughout the year. No prior experience necessary, just an enthusiasm for plants! Apply by Monday 13 February Programme runs March – December Find out more Life Drawing Class Lucian Freud: Drawing Plant Portraits Back for a second session by popular demand! Lucian Freud is infamous for his gritty, fleshy nudes, and so inspired by our current exhibition Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits, London Drawing Group will be offering a life drawing class like no other. Set against the soaring backdrop of our central nave space, and nestled amongst a backdrop of lush plants, our incredible model Lily will be posing in, with and amongst our leafy friends. Tickets include access to the exhibition, guided instruction and bespoke drawing exercises throughout our Life Drawing class. Fri 24 February, 6.30pm – 8.3pm £30 Standard, £25 Friends / Young Fronds Book tickets Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77): View Across the Rooftops of Lambeth Palace A rare 17th century sketch of the view from our medieval tower is currently on auction with Sotheby’s. We take a closer look at what we can learn from the sketch in this article, reproduced from ‘Sotheby’s New York January 2023 Catalogue: Master Works on Paper from Five Centuries’: Wenceslaus Hollar’s bird’s eye view of Lambeth House (Palace), official residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, is a splendid example of the artist’s dynamic ‘on the spot’ sketches. It has not appeared at auction since the drawing was discovered in a sale, in 1931, by the art historian, Iolo A. Williams. Its re-emergence, as a work by Hollar, provides a wonderful opportunity to delight and delve into the world of this fascinating Bohemian artist, whose drawings rarely come to the market. Born in Prague in 1607, Wenceslaus Hollar was a prolific draughtsman and printmaker, who is perhaps best known for his visual records of mid 17th century England. His drawings and prints of London before the great fire of 1666 are historical documents of great importance, as well as aesthetically appealing images of a bygone world. Keep reading

Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits Exhibition Catalogue Can’t make it to see our Lucian Freud exhibition in person, or want to find out more his artistic relationship with plants? The exhibition catalogue is available now in our online bookshop! Beautifully illustrated with examples of Freud’s plant paintings and etchings, this catalogue includes interviews with Freud’s longtime studio assistant David Dawson and daughter Annie Freud. Order your copy for just £20 Buy a catalogue Call for papers! Visions of Welfare Conference This May we are hosting an international conference discussing the role of women in the creation of the spaces of the post-war Welfare States, co-hosted by the Women of the Welfare Landscape Project, the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain and the Women in Danish Architecture project. The importance of quality open spaces for health and wellbeing has been highlighted more than ever by the Covid-19 pandemic. And historically the provision of well designed, accessible, open public spaces was a crucial part of a wider concept of economic redistribution. While previous research has uncovered the work of many individual ‘heroines’ and celebrated iconic design projects by women, this conference invites abstracts that consider the role of women in creating the spaces of the period internationally with the aim of looking beyond individual achievements and professional boundaries. Abstracts of 200 words are invited and should be submitted online by Monday 30 January 2023 Tickets to attend the conference will be available soon Find out more Object of the Week: Illustrated Letters in the William Shute Barrington Archive By Alice Ridgway, Archivist January 16th marked ‘Blue Monday’ the most melancholy day of the year. However, mine was brightened by discovering some charming drawings in the William Shute Barrington archive, which we hold in the Archive of Garden Design. The archive contains correspondence, plans, plant lists, sketches and paintings between 1920-1940 relating to the gardening career of Viscount William ‘Bill’ Reginald Barrington (1873-1960). After a career in the military, Barrington restored and redesigned gardens at a number of stately homes in East Sussex and further afield. His gardening philosophy aimed to give the illusion that a garden had existed forever, stating that ‘its relationship to the surrounding fields, hills and buildings should have a naturalness borne of scrupulous attention to detail’. The letters I found were sent by Guy Roderick Falkner, an unknown gardening friend of Barrington. They thank him for his plant cuttings and hospitality and give short updates about his horticultural projects. My favourite drawing features two cartoon birds – most likely a depiction of the tame pair of starlings that lived with Barrington alongside his partner, Violet Gordon Woodhouse. Keep reading Images: Sow, Grow, Eat illustration by Ross Bennett; Plant Life Drawing photo courtesy of Luisa MacCormack; Visions of Welfare Conference © Fortepan / Szabó Gábor

Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

Sewing Spring Seeds….growing!

I have my very own collection of new seeds for spring planting. I’ve found in the past, that if I wait until early  spring (April 1st) to make my selections, they are very picked over, and often I miss out on the ones I’m really looking for. So last week I made my “picks” and purchased them all at my visit to the nursery. I’m so excited. 

First on my fav”’ list is:

Sweet Peas………Lathyrus odoratus

Sweet Peas are of several varieties. I’ve selected the “Bouquet” blend.  They are referred to as a Spencer type, ideal for cutting, because of their extra large flowers, longer and sturdier stems, and they produce a larger number of blooms each year. The are ruffled, lightly scented and are a “romantic” flare. I bought them to be able to cut and bring in the house. I love a tiny vase of flowers near the kitchen window, one on the bathroom sink and one beside my pillow. Sweet Peas aroma is very light and delicate. Can’t wait!!

I have also selected four other seedlings this year, to include Cosmos, Nasturtium, Fireball Zinnia and Sunrise Morning Glory.

My sweetheart and I have a connection with Sweet Peas, so I’m certain I’ll be putting a few of these puffy/curly flowers under his chin, in hopes that the aroma will spark a little feeling of amorous adoration. What a lovely thought and anticipation…..Amen!

“Contessa” says……it is such a lovely and sweet thing to do!

THE GARDEN MUSEUM …..the UK

Talk | The House of a Lifetime: Umberto Pasti and Ngoc Minh Ngo We are delighted to welcome writer Umberto Pasti joined in conversation by photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo to celebrate the publication of their new book The House of a Lifetime: A Collector’s Journey in Tangier.Saturated colours, intricate patterns, striking architecture: Pasti’s house and garden in Tangier is the ultimate example of a well-curated Moroccan villa, filled with museum-quality pieces of furniture, luminous textiles, rare tiles and ceramics, and other objets d’art worthy of a private museum. Set in a lush hillside garden filled with the native flora of northern Morocco, the house offers glimpses of the serene landscapes and fountains through windows, archways and loggias. Umberto and Ngoc’s conversation will be chaired by garden designer and Garden Museum Trustee Tania Compton. Tues 21 February, 7pm £20 Standard, £15 Friends, £10 Young Fronds and Students £10 Livestream Book tickets Garden Museum Literary Festival 2023: Parham House We are delighted to announce that the next Garden Museum Literary Festival will be held at Parham House, West Sussex on Friday 23 and Saturday 24 June 2023, hosted by Lady Emma Barnard and her husband, James. Parham House is one of the country’s finest Elizabethan houses set at the foot of the South Downs in West Sussex. This beautiful place, with its award-winning gardens, has changed little over the centuries and remains a family home. This Monday 16 January we will be releasing tickets to Friends for a week of priority booking! To enjoy discounted tickets and grab your tickets ahead of the public release on Monday 23 January, become a Friend from just £36 a year. Become a Friend Sowing Roots: Esiah Levy Esiah Levy, known as Rodney Levy to his family, created SeedsShare in 2016. This involved growing vegetables in his back garden, saving the seeds and then sending them to people around the world for the cost of postage. He hoped that people would send different seeds back to him, to grow, save and send. He came to the Garden Museum in January 2018 to take part in Incredible Edible Lambeth’s Seed Swap event sharing seeds that he’d grown. Esiah was born in Croydon in July 1986, was married and a father to two young sons. The Garden Museum had hoped to interview Esiah for our Sowing Roots: Caribbean Garden Heritage project but in January 2019, Esiah passed away very suddenly, at the age of 32. When we finally embarked on the Sowing Roots project in 2020, we still wanted to include Esiah Levy’s story. We set about trying to make contact with his family. Food writer (and Great British Bake-Off finalist) Ruby Tandoh had written about him. It was by contacting Ruby directly that we were introduced to Esiah’s widow Kealy and his sister Syreeta who both agreed to be interviewed and part of our Sowing Roots exhibition. Keep reading

Enter the Lucian Freud raffle! Enter our fundraising raffle to win an exclusive private tour of Lucian Freud’s former studio in Kensington! Second prize will win a priceless cutting from Freud’s own Zimmerlinde plant, the subject of many of his paintings, and third prize is a framed photographic print by Howard Sooley of Freud’s studio. Each ticket counts as an additional entry to the prize draw and the money raised from the raffle will support the Garden Museum and help to ensure the continuation our exhibitions, education and community programmes. £10 a ticket Winners drawn on Monday 6 March Enter the raffle Could you be the next Chair of the Garden Museum Board of Trustees? We’re currently recruiting for a new Chair to lead the Board of Trustees during an exciting period of the Garden Museum’s development. Read more about what being a Chair means, how the role supports the Museum, and how to apply below. Find out more Object of the Week: Carters “Tested” Garden Seeds Catalogue, 1898 The back cover of a garden seed catalogue from James Carter & Co., 237, 238 & 97 High Holborn, London, featuring an illustration of dianthus varieties. Explore our collection online Images: Umberto Pasti’s Tangier home (c) Ngoc Minh Ngo; Parham House (c) Elizabeth Zeschin; Esiah Levy photo by Maria Bell for Table Magazine; Cutting from Freud’s zimmerlinde (c) Matt Collins; Still Life with Zimmerlinde, c.1950 Freud, Lucian (1922-2011) Credit: Private Collection. Photo © Christie’s Images/© The Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2022/Bridgeman Images; Garden Museum exterior photo by Ollie Tomlinson

Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

THE GARDEN MUSEUM – from the UK

Talk | Alice Vincent: Why Women Grow We are delighted to host the official launch of Alice Vincent’s new book Why Women Grow, a major narrative exploration of the relationship between women and the soil. The book was borne of a determination to tell the stories that have too-frequently been buried in the earth for centuries. Over the course of two, largely locked-down years, Alice visited the gardens and growing spaces of 45 women from all walks of life. Why Women Grow is a collection of these conversations, along with Alice’s own personal journey as she contemplates a new phase of life. She will be joined on-stage by two women from the book, herbologist and chef Maya Thomas, Medical Herbalist and Ayurvedic Practitioner Anne McIntyre and gardener and creator of Decolonise the Garden, Sui Searle, to discuss the reasons why women go to ground. Tues 28 Feb, 7pm Standard £20, Friends / Young Fronds £15 Book add-on available Book tickets Film | Lucian Freud: Wasteground, Paddington (1970) The view from the window at 227 Gloucester Terrace in London was far from bucolic. Painted when the artist was in his late 40s, this abandoned garden in Paddington—then a rundown and densely populated area just north of Hyde Park—captures a story of human and plant resilience. Guest Curator Giovanni Aloi shares what we can learn from this unconventional l garden painting. Lucian Freud: Plant Portraits is open until 5 March Digital Partner Patch Plants Watch more films in our online exhibition

William Pamplin: Nurseryman of Lavender Hill By Thomas Rutter Former Horticultural Trainee at the Garden Museum, Thomas became curious about William Pamplin when he discovered his diaries in the Museum’s Archive. The full article ‘William Pamplin: Nurseryman of Lavender Hill’ appeared in The London Gardener journal (v26). William Pamplin (1765-1844) is today not a name known to most. Yet he was once a celebrated nurseryman acquainted with some of the leading lights in the horticultural world. Pamplin’s diaries, donated to the Garden Museum Archive, cover the period 1827–1841 and paint a vivid picture of the life and times of a Regency nurseryman. On the expiry of his lease on the Pine Apple Nursery in c.1826 on the Kings Road, Pamplin moved his enterprise south of the Thames to what Robert Sweet described as ‘the more airy and healthy situation of Lavender-hill, in the Wandsworth-road, at a pleasant distance from London, and where the choice herbaceous, and other plants, may be expected to thrive much better than nearer the smoke of the metropolis’. Pamplin’s diaries describe not only his growing and purveying of plants but document a range of activities that suggest that metropolitan nurserymen were imaginative and resourceful at a time of great horticultural extravagance… Keep reading A New Season of Cooking Masterclasses Got a new year’s resolution up to up your cooking game? Join us in our Learning Studio kitchen for a hands-on cooking masterclass! Hosted by expert food writers and chefs, the sessions include tastings or a full meal eaten together depending on the course. All profits from our cooking masterclass series help to cover food costs for our community programmes. Coming up this season: Fermentation with Claire Heal | Sun 19 Feb Book tickets Vegetarian Feast with Zita Steyn | Sun 19 March Book tickets Borough Market: The Knowledge with Angela Clutton | Sun 30 April Book tickets Herbs with Rachel Davies | Sun 21 May Book tickets £90 per person, includes all ingredients See all cooking classes Happy New Year! The Garden Museum will be open again from Monday 9 January, and we look forward to welcoming you back this year. But before we get digging into 2023, over on Instagram we’re celebrating some of our highlights from the past twelve months, from show-stopping floral design for British Flowers Week to talking compost at our Spring Plant Fair, and luxuriating in the glamour and beauty of roses. See our 2022 highlights Images: Why Women Grow illustration courtesy of Canongate; Fermentation jars (c) Claire Heal; British Flowers Week 2022 (c) Graham Lacdao

Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 7LB gardenmuseum.org.uk

Our Wellington Client – Today’s Assignment

Our client has been away since December 10th and today  we are making preparation for her arrival back home from Tennessee. Her back yards common area had never been cleared since she bought the property five years ago. So yesterday and today we finally completed this task. She had hired a contractor to build a lovely brick patio, which due to covenant rules in our  condo association, had to be removed. The center of the yard is now just dirt after a demo crew came and tore the patio out. So in anticipation of her being approved for a new “regulation” patio, we completed a serious clean up of her entire open area in the back. She has a number of patio pieces and we clustered them at one corner of her back wall area. When she returns we plan to tarp them and leave them there until the new patio construction is approved by our Condominium Board.

So while there today we cleaned up all her beds, deadheaded all her Pansies and hauled away four bags of debris including a good bit of the crumbled cement foundation of the first patio structure. It was quite a mess but it’s taking shape. Her small wooded common area has a rich and dense undergrowth that’s actually kind of native woodlands, so even though we cleaned up a goid bit of it, she still has some perimeter growth at the back of the property offering her location some very nice privacy.

We had secured permission to take care of this clean up and we think she is going to be very pleased with our progress.

Once cleaned up it provided an opportunity to see lots of  new spring flowering shoots coming up, which you couldn’t even see prior to our work. It’s looking very promising now.

Happily today it was 67 degrees here and quite lovely day outdoors for doing a yard work project like this one. We had a good time and feel accomplished. Gradually it will all come together we are certain.

We completed and billed our client for four (4) hours of work today.

“Contessa” says….. it’s all a very good thing!

Exploring My Task List From Yesterday

Today I completed a few exercises to cover some suggestions from yesterday with regard to my pursuing a new career in writing.

One of the suggestions was to read your own writings from some time ago. I surmise this gives you a perspective into your writing skills at that time and perhaps may even reassure you that your writing is actually pretty good. Affirmation perhaps.

………………………

So… I followed the first instruction on my list of ways to avoid putting off beginning to write again, and stop procrastinating. Something has created a road block. Getting past that road block could be just a matter of taking a walk or a run. It’s one of the suggestions on my task list from yesterday. I myself chose an early morning walk at 29 degrees. It does get you going and well worth the chill you feel. An awakening for sure.

But I also decided to go back in time to my blog, and visited my very first post on June 30th of the year 2010. I’ve included the txt of my first post below.  It was interesting…..because I had, by that time, owned my new shop, Contessa’s Garden and Gift for a couple years. I had only just acquired a new digital camera and was still using a “flip phone” and I was teaching myself how to master WordPress, an online yearly subscription tool, that I’ve now subscribed to for over 13 years. I was using a laptop at the time. WordPress opened up a whole new world for me in communicating my gardening and store ownership knowledge, to my customers using the internet. Within a couple years I was into the purchase of an Apple iPhone and so I ditched the digital camera for a camera right on my iPhone. It was a fantastic transition. And it changed my business from known,  to very well known. And my writing skills from good to pretty darn good.

So it’s now almost 2023  and I’m going to take a whole day to read back to where my blog began. Check out my writing style and see where I can improve and learn some things about how my blog has evolved. In terms of “my writings.” I think it might prove to be an eventful exercise🦋.

One of the other tasks on the list from yesterday, was to read a book. I am reading a book right now and this is giving me an insight into the writing style of another author.  It gives me a focus on what this writer is trying to communicate, and in the case of this particular book, it has exercises in teaching you new skills. To see how the author writes and what he is trying to convey is interesting. This reading will broaden my vocabulary, perhaps improve my  spelling and grammar skills, perhaps teach me how to incorporate some humor into my writing and open my eyes to content that I have never read before. Of particular interest to me in the book is a technique in a chapter called Progressive Relaxation. The suggestion that if you are not truly in a relaxed mode your creative energy may not flow. For example, you sit down to write or create and you are just not able to spit it out or get the words on paper. It happens. Burn out, can sometimes paralyze creativity. So doing the exercises mentioned in this book might help, and focusing on some mind exercises to “relax” you, could very well be a great answer to turning your writing creativity around. Some deep breathing combined with some muscle tension exercises might create relaxation and bring a calmness into your heart and it might even lower your blood pressure, creating a sense of better, and a more whole relaxation. All good points and ways to combat, what I myself might call brain fatigue or brain fog.  

So today to recap, I explored two items on the task list which could help me to get past my current roadblock that’s keeping me from  creating new “writing,” and new ideas for content.

More exploration tomorrow. Tonight I am reading “past” blog postings and my book called; Fighting The Inside Dragons.  New steps to explore in broadening my new writing career.

We will return tomorrow to reference my task list again. I look forward to sharing once again with you.

“Contessa”

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Our First Blog Post from 2010

Gardening Tips for July

30WednesdayJun 2010

NOW  is a great time to clean up your garden beds and your pot containers.   Remove dead leaves and blossoms.  Cut back your stems by half.  Yes it will temporarily make you plants look bare, but nature is divine and she will  replenish your blossoms and beautiful leaves within about two to three weeks time.  Add fresh Miracle Grow Potting Soil by about one inch to your pot containers.  Push garden dirt towards the roots of your garden flowers.  They will love the attention and the protection they get from fresh, moist dirt around their stems.

Our intense heat in Virginia has been relentless and some flowers are looking a bit weary.  Mid summer is a great time to plant a few new flowers with color.  Try some marigolds, nasturtiums, morning-glory and sunflowers.  The birds will love these new additions and in the fall you will love the fact that these lovely colorful blossoms are still “Hanging In.”

Another great addition for July is to add some Sweet Potato Vine and Coleus.  They provide endless color and if you take clippings once your plants are established, you will be able to bring some in  and place them  in a vase with water.  They will root in a matter of days and you can then create new plants to enjoy and even share with friends.

Lastly, water only in the early morning, or late evening, but do water daily.

Gratitude……this Sunday Evening

Psalm 50:14

Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High. 

My Father, my God, my Lord, hear my prayer,

I am so grateful for everything that you have given me. Thank you so much for loved ones in my life who really care for…..and about me, and who support my calling. I am grateful for your generous and faithful provision through my gardening. I Thank you for the many ways I am able to serve and give of myself to others through my blog communications and my gardening assignments. Thank you for your wonderful world where my hands can till the soil and plant the beautiful vegetation you provide. I am grateful for all the beauty and colors of your trees, bushes, plants and creatures on this earthly planet. Your skies are ever changing, giving us cloud formations, sunrises and sunsets and morning mists that fill your world with beauty and warmth and moisture. And your gracious rains come to cleanse us and all things green. My heart is so grateful and full. In reality, all of humanity is living in a very troubled world that is crying for your mercy. I am so fortunate to be in an area of relative plenty, peace and stability. I feel as though I could write a thousand books about your great world and all your goodness. My heart is brimming with prayerful thanksgiving.  I thank you for everything I am as a person and all the many inspirations, talents and gifts you bring into my mind and my heart. I do have many. I write about your many wonderful gifts and I’m certain you are calling me to write especially for you. I vow to please you my holy God… through my writings. I ask for your favor as I put words into form and declare to the world of your true mercy and goodness. You have made me who I am….and you have generously provided me with my new calling, to write for your greater glory. I lay my spirit in your loving hands.  

Oh God…..all of my being cries out…..thank you my Lord!

O Lord I pray….Amen!