The Best Alternative Therapy Is A Garden

This morning I decided to go for a stroll around my garden.

Here are some of the lovely flowers blooming in abundance today.

The garden is doing extraordinarily well this year thanks to the abundance of rain throughout the spring and now summer and the heavy snows we had this past winter. Although we are not too crazy about all this moisture the plants seem to just love it.

My very favourite David Austin rose bush. It has no less than 50 roses open right now with probably another 40-50 buds ready to open when these ones are finished. I'm sure I'll be dead heading for quite some time when these roses are done or I could just let them turn to the hips, but then I wouldn't get any more roses .... hmmm, think I'll do the dead heading.

The lilies are getting ready to explode with colour, check back in a few days, I'll post a picture when they open. These lilies are the most spectacular flaming orange when they open.

My Ladies Mantle which got rained down yesterday with the severe rainstorm that came through in the afternoon, is still lovely even as they lay on the ground.

These pretty little Coral Bells held their own against the fierce winds and rain and seem to be enjoying the sun this morning.

I love my garden, albeit small. I feel so calm and peaceful when I sit on my deck with a cup of tea and just gaze upon the lovely colours of the flowers and fill my nostrils with their scent on the wind.

Ahhhhhhhhhh ... heaven.


"Take me into the garden, my boy," he said at last. "And tell me all about it."

And so they led him in.

The place was a wilderness of autumn gold and purple and violet and flaming scarlet, and on every side were sheaves of late lilies standing together - lilies which were white or white and ruby. He remember well when the first of them had been planted that just at this season of the year their late glories should reveal themselves. Late roses climbed and hung and clustered, and the sunshine deepening the hue of the yellowing trees made one feel that one stood in an embowered temple of gold. The newcomer stood silent just as the children had done when they came into its greyness. He looked round and round.

"I though it would be dead," he said.

"Mary thought so at first," said Colin. "But it came alive."

Excerpt from The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett