Our family just finished celebrating my mother’s 80th birthday and I was able to enjoy the occasion with awe.  Pretty amazing anyone turning 80.  My Dad turns 82 in August.  They both look several years younger than their years.  Immortal sometimes.  I know they aren’t, just like … [Read more...]

"Change is the constant, the signal for rebirth, the egg of the phoenix." -Christina Baldwin We are given no guarantees.  We go through life seeking a certainty that doesn’t originate except in our romantic spun illusions.  When the curve ball comes, moving us in a direction we … [Read more...]

Who has not found the heaven below Will fail of it above. God’s residence is next to mine, His furniture is love. - Emily Dickinson There is a certain divinity that occurs in the most normal of circumstances; circumstances which are not at first glance perfect, but in which … [Read more...]

Magic happens in Merlin’s Garden in spring around 6:30 in the evening.  The sun is making its final dusting across the California earth casting unique figures of light and shadow that give the flowers and foliage another form of beauty. Within moments the light dims as the sun … [Read more...]

Spring has arrived in Merlin's Garden.  Take a look. … [Read more...]

There is no "The End" to be written, neither can you, like an architect, engrave in stone the day the garden was finished; a painter can frame his picture, a composer notate his coda, but a garden is always on the move.-   Mirabel Osler Sometimes the garden is more about the … [Read more...]

When we moved into our home, we met our neighbor Ed soon enough.  In his eighties, he was a tall and handsome fellow with dark silver-streaked hair and a moustache, and a life history involving submarines and gardening and a whole host of other adventures through which we … [Read more...]

Late blooming plants are typically defined as those plants that become more robust as summer flaunts its last hurrah.  By a gardener's definition, a late bloomer is that plant that still thrives when the weather cools and summer fades. Spring is approaching so it will become … [Read more...]

There is a lot of value in adding humor to a life.  We are such serious folk when it comes to living.  Not all perhaps, but most I would think.  We take things way too seriously.  Then comes a day of reckoning where we are reminded how petty our grievances and those things over … [Read more...]