Ticket to Ride

Earlier today I was performing the heavenly task of harvesting lavender seeds. My hands were filled with the scent as I spilled the tiny gems out into a bowl. In delicate drafts off the pond the perfume of roses mingled with the lavender and I began to think of all the scented plants that I have in the garden. That is when I decided to take a little sniffing tour.

Now I could list all the scented plants I have out there but then this would just be a laundry list of otherwise rather common plants. I have varieties of mint, sage, curry, lilies, scented tulips, and so on. I have a passionate weak spot for scents because it is the swiftest route through the haze of rational thinking and I simply can not resist the E ticket ride.

For those of you who were born after the “when things were really cool” period: an E ticket ride refers to the old ticket books you used to get at Disneyland. The ticket books were letter/color coded and came with a certain number of each. The E tickets were used for the very best rides. Sometimes if a ride cost more than one E ticket you could use other tickets plus an E ticket to make up the difference. The Es were quickly used up and therefore coveted by all. Many sibling battles were fought and future first born children traded for an extra E ticket back in the day.

As a child I loved the experience “rides” that Disneyland put together. It was all about the ride of being transported to another time and place. When you are young you can let yourself buy those fantasies. All you have to do is hand them your cotton candy coated sticky ticket and you take the ride with wide eyed acceptance. There are no adult pretenses of jaded sobriety to hinder your fun or keep you in check.

As far as the brain is concerned scent is the E ticket for experience rides in the garden. Roses can smell wonderful but where do yours take you? Some of my roses remind me of my mother. I can’t quite remember her though I do remember her scent and it breaks my heart a little every time I smell those roses. Catmint to me smells like sunlight coming through lace curtains in a farmhouse window. It’s like an amber glow across sepia toned photographs atop a worn wooden dresser. And lavender feels like smooth wooden floors and glycerin soap on a hot summer day.

The chocolate mint I brush by in the mornings as I feed the birds always makes me smile because it smells happy and safe. Rosemary transports me to the majesty of pine forests and lemon balm is like sunlight dancing on my skin. There are so many beautifully scented plants and flowers to choose from but if a scent is the equivalent of and E ticket ride I want to make my choices wisely.

I figure that life takes you on a lot of rides that you’d rather not go on so if given half a chance why not design your own amusement park where the rides are the ones you want to take? What does happy smell like to you?

Rain and the Existential Garden

Rain, Glorious Rain!!
I had given up completely. I was at peace with it. There would be no rain and I would continue through the final weeks of our precious summer rationing out the scant well water to my tenacious but parched plants.
The weather man was beginning to remind me of a guy I had dated long ago during a season of very poor decision making. He broke promise after promise and I knew it was in the very nature of the man to do so. I wanted and even needed to believe in his lies, in his stories of better days and happier times yet to come. And just like that putz from way back then, our weather man finally got lucky. (no, not that lucky) One of the many days he promised reward for my faithfulness, “later, tomorrow, the day after…” it finally came. The rain came. Is it enough? Probably not. Is it welcomed? Absolutely! Hey, after all that’s how these guys stay in business. They get lucky just often enough to make us forget all those endless fruitless hours spent waiting on the promises that never deliver.

I’ll keep “dating” my weather man but the other guy is long gone in the dust heap of history. I honestly don’t even remember his name, Bill.

Onto promises that are producing results. The Oriental lilies are performing beautifully. I have found myself completely enamored of them and just insist on having fields and fields of them. Well that’s odd, suddenly I hear Scarlett O’Hara in my head. I’ll have to check the date on my meds. Well anyway, the lilies are the most heavenly thing in the garden. I am an absolute sucker for beautiful scents and these beauties are splendid. Lying in bed last night I could smell their perfume coming in on the cool night air. This was all the more enchanting to me because they are quite some distance away. Another fantastic scent that is currently wafting through the windows is the chocolate mint in the Blue Garden. The rain seems to have activated it and the air is now filled with a fresh minty fragrance. I brush by it when I feed the birds in the morning and it is always a delicious event but rain brushed mint is wonderfully new to me.

Scent is such a primal sensation. It bypasses all the thinking centers of the brain and activates memory and instinct instantly. It can make you fall in love again or break your heart with a sad memory. It can cause fear and loathing or bring you peace and happiness. If utilized with skill it is possible to create an emotional journey within the garden by using all the senses. I am working on recasting an environment that will signal the emotional triggers I wish to cultivate by building in layers of experiential elements of the senses and how they connect to the mind and spirit. I see this project as a dimensional creation that in turn creates something which cannot be seen directly.

Now that’s a pretty wordy way to say I want to feel good in my garden. I’m just a lot more deliberative than I like to let on. I figure everything has a purpose and I’d like to tune that to my every advantage. The time we have is so fleeting and it is far too easy to let it slip by unnoticed. I want to make sure that I am getting every little drop of nector out of this sweet and difficult ride.