gardening is my zen

I love this time of year. The sunshine, the soft spring breezes, the flowers and sweet smelling soil. Few things in life are as fine as sitting on soft grass in the sunshine, with a good book and a plump kitty cat to keep you company.

This spring I have really started taking gardening seriously, and have invested a lot of my mom's money (ha, sorry mom) into a vegetable garden. Currently I'm growing onions, hot peppers, sweet peppers, brussel sprouts (kind of gross, but my dad wanted them), zucchini, cucumber and tomatoes. The garden has a pretty border of wild purple flowers and mint. My mom keeps telling me the purple flowers are weeds and to yank them all up, but I'm loathe to do so -- purple is, after all, my favorite color, and seeing the colorful flowers all around my veggies is so nice!

My mom has put together a garden of her own, consisting mainly of herbs. I'm not sure of everything she's growing, but I do know we have cilantro, parsley, basil and dill. We also have a lovely rhubarb growing, and tons of flowers. We have everything from lilacs to columbines, fuschias to verbena daisies. Love them all!

The back deck has become home to an assortment of potted flowers and a bed of lettuce. (Yes, I wrote lettuce!) So, all in all, not a bad haul. I love going out there with a book and just sitting with the flowers, basking in all the reds, yellows and purples we have growing everywhere. Few things in this life make me happy as healthy, magnificent plants.

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting on the back deck with my mother. I don't remember everything we were chatting about -- she was probably nagging me to do some errand or chore that I've typically left undone for the past month. (Does it qualify as nagging if it's taken me so long to do? Hmm ...) At any rate, seeing how pretty the yard looked with all the flowers, I told my mom about my fond memories of my time at the Brisbane Botanical Gardens last summer in Australia. The flowers there were magnificent.

Later on, my mom came home with a box full of one of the types of flowers I saw in Australia. I'll have to look up the name of them. But oh, I was so happy! I am planning on planting them today, somewhere sunny and warm where everyone driving by will see them.

In other news, I've been performing a fair bit and teaching a little. I've put together a nice quartet, and we play a wide variety of music. We cover everything from classical (Schubert, Satie) to oldies (Sinatra, The Beatles) to the strange and unusual (Stravinsky, Star Trek) to everything in between! I'm also performing with the very talented Mark Woodyatt, a violinist and mandolin player. I think he's my favorite person in the world to perform with, even though we argue like cats and dogs during rehearsals!

I'm considering getting a cruise ship job or similar work this autumn, and just cruising around and getting paid to play until I go off to grad school. The money is very good on cruise ships, and it's a good way to travel for free ... not to mention, it's the perfect way to force myself to practice every day!!

Now off to dream of the South Pacific as I read my way through a Paul Theroux travelogue and try to avoid doing too much work -- this weather makes me lazy, content and at peace.