Travel Theme: Gardens

Sea Garden is one of my favourite places in the city I call my second home – Burgas, Bulgaria. It is always a pleasure to take a stroll there – even if only in memories… 

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. /Gertrude Jekyll/

Ailsa’ s Travel Theme

Ese’s Weekly Shoot & Quote Challenge – Direction

My challenge is my passion – a photo you have taken and a quote, attributed to its author, and of course related to your image. Every week on Sunday I will post a new prompt. 

I want to thank my fellow bloggers who have already become a part of this challenge. Everyone’ s welcome to join! All you have to do is:

– create a post of your own with the title Ese’s Weekly Shoot & Quote Challenge – Direction;
– include a link to this post also for others to find you.

Let your ideas flow and enjoy!  Ese

Prompt 15 – DIRECTION

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving.
/Oliver Wendell Holmes/

And there are so many of them – probable and possible ones.

If on the way up…

…I keep getting stuck,

… the best decision is just to take some time…

…and never give up!

What about you and the directions you have taken or never would?

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Sand and Dirt

I think there has been more sand than dirt on my path but see for yourself…

Have a look at more here – Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Sand and Dirt

Love Affair With Nature

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. /Lao Tzu/

Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. /C.Monet/

Gardens are poems where you stroll with your hands in your pockets. /P.Albert-Birot/

See how nature – trees, flowers, grass – grows in silence;
see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence…we need silence
to be able to touch souls. /Mother Teresa/

Green Thumbs Or Walking Down The Memory…Garden

Looking out of the window this morning, there was a typical summer Sunday view of Burgas – a family „armed”  with towels and beach umbrellas marching down the path to the beach. One family, another, older couples, youngsters. And a typical day of „an average Latvia Soviet Republic family” flashed in my memory… The one about a Sunday morning when all the family members also gathered together, just the direction chosen was different. Not the beach, neither shopping malls (we simply didn’ t have them back then) but gardens.

Imagine those allotment cooperatives where each family had their own patch with either just a shack to keep the gardenings tools at or a small house with one room in it to shelter from the rain. By the way, there were no all those competitions like the ones today – „ The nicest garden” or „The best garden design” etc. None. People were simply figuring out how not to plant potatoes in the same place for many years in a row, how to „fit”  in not just carrots, onions, cucumbers, red beets, beans, strawberries and some other berry bushes but also flowers. To have something for one’ s eyes and soul, not just stomach. Labyrinths of beds that had to be kept nice and clean from weeds. And not just for the harvest in autumn to be better but also because it was the duty of every good Soviet family – to keep their garden clean. 

Let me be honest – I hated it! From the bottom of my heart I hated the never – ending weeding that turned into harvesting in the very end of summer/early autumn. With picking berries in between those 2 important seasons, calming nerves down during the winter and in late spring – all over again. So…yes, my summer weekends were also „connected”  very much to being outside and sunbathing, just not exactly lying in the sand on the beach.  The key – word was weeding. My parents still remember my humming of what was the chorus from „Sunshine Reggae” (the one by Laid Back) over and over again coming from the other end of the allotment (yes, one of the things I liked to do alone since it was always a touch easier to be angry in solitude). All the way through my school years. And just to „know” the difference between the short and long distance „weeding race” one summer my parents decided to take on weeding of a 1 ha(about 2.47 acres) beet plantation… With good intentions in mind, of course – to get a certain ammount of sugar in autumn from the kolhoz (collective farm) those fields belonged to. You know the expression about the road to hell being covered with good intentions, don’t you?  My memories from that summer are very clear up to this day – infinite lines of green tops of beets and the day when a cow was killed near the field by the lightening during the storm.  

There’ s no bitterness in those memories, not even a single drop. Neither an opinion that grass was greener back then. Just…if somebody in a vegetable stand starts to explain to me „the road this potatoe has made from the field to the market”, I know exactly what he means. What…makes the price. And the fragrance of summers in my parents’ allotment.

P.S: I am a „proud owner” of an appartment in a block – building back in Riga therefore planting, weeding and harvesting hasn’ t been a part of my daily – routine for quite some years. Though when my friend bought a house and announced to her mother and mother – in – law that she is ready for a nice lawn and a couple of flowers but NOTHING MORE yet , I got her. Completely.

A Word A Week Photo Challenge – Garden

There is always music amongst the trees in the garden,
but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. /M.Aumonier/

There is a garden in every childhood, an enchanted place
where colors are brighter, the air softer, and the morning more fragrant
than ever again. /E.Lawrence/

When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy,
there is always the garden. /M.Aumonier/

A Word A Week Photo Challenge – Garden

Carpe Diem Haiku *Tulips*

uncertain season
snow piles instead of tulips
waiting gets tired

vase full of tulips
spring is eager to begin
maybe tomorrow

garden is awake
white blossoms like young bride’ s dress
red tulip stands out

Join Carpe Diem Haiku

August 30th

bloody steak dripping
into crushed bowl of rice
zen garden