Dreaming + Garden = Mondo

Five years ago Tim and I took a trip North. We were visiting family in the Pacific Northwest and tacked on a week to head to Canada. We spent some of our Canadian time on a little piece of land called Salt Springs Island. I actually posted about it here when this blog was first started.

That island changed me. Quite literally in many ways. I remember we carefully motored off the ferry onto small winding roads and I was struck by that feeling I once had as a little girl ... as if I had found a place of magic and fey folk. The island itself is close and intimate, peppered with small farms and sheep and artists. We had to hike to our campsite, right there on the water. I got pregnant with the boys on that island. I still get goosebumps when I recall the days there.

We found a winery; small, local, like everything there. It was a warm day and remember I was so silly, afraid to sip the wine tastings 'just in case'. I tried their white and bought a bottle and we watched our then puppy Mishka plunge into a small pond with the 'winery local' dogs, paddling around and splashing. I loved that day, that feeling.

The first thing that I noticed when we pulled up to the winery was the land. It rolled a bit up to the home, down to the tasting room. The owners were clever gardeners, terracing with raised beds, junk repurposed into garden art, flowers mixed with food. It was like a page out of Sunset magazine and we got to spend the day in it. There is nothing that gets closer to my heart than real life Sunset mag scenes.



I think that day enbedded itself into me, my psyche and dreams. It certainly embedded itself into my garden aesthetic. Since that day we have had twins, raised them, revisited another island, and finally finally realized some of the gardening dream that buried itself into my heart that day.





I will never be a farmer, far from a proficient gardener even now. But over the last 4 years I have learned so much about what I love. I was never really a 'growing' girl, impatient with what I thought the earth would just let go of freely. I have tempered that impatience now, learned to observe, learned to only plant what we like to eat, learned to play and plan all at the same time.



The backyard this year looks like that place, that sweet spot on the sweetest spot I have yet been in all my travels. It has the beds and the mixed purpose planting. It has flowers and fruit and food and us. A place for us to sit and talk or play or eat. It is far from done, I have come to realize no garden is ever really done, just fluxing in and out of states. But it is as close to the 'perfect' as I want it to be.



If we do leave here I will mourn just a bit. But also know that if that scene from 5 years ago ran so deep that we created here, well, then we can create it anywhere. And if we do go North, we will be that much closer to Salt Springs.

I realized this dream and wrote this post a few days back (before the blogger black out). I also came to the realization that sometimes dreams need a little refresher and signed up for a second round of Mondo Beyondo, this time with a few good friends that I cannot wait to work with as they do their first course. I am very excite about this.


And just as the garden space became something onto itself, I think it may be high time to seek out a new space on the internets and so I hope to move house this weekend to Squarespace where things just look a little prettier. I hope that you, my reading friends, do follow and I will make sure to update here if it does actually happen.

Here is to Dreaming in Action, right?