Saturday Farmer's Market - In a Walden State of Mind

Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

- from: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods, Henry David Thoreau

(as are all subsequent quotes)

And time keeps moving (even when I don't) . . . 

I weed (a bit). I plan (a lot). I change things (slowly).  

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

I also take pictures. I'm no photographer, but I do enjoy playing with my new camera in the garden.
Would you like some more pretty pictures?

The Portulaca have filled in nicely.

These are just two of the delicate little flowers filling in the bare spots of the 'mailbox bed.'

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.

Lantana 

in red and orange

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Lantana

in yellow

I also had Lantana in shades of pink and aqua, but they don't seem to have made it through the winter.

None of them have even broken ground yet, while these are about two feet high.

I guess I need to look into replacing them.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. 

You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.

A homemade bird bath near the mail box, made from a clay saucer on an old stump and surrounded by Fortnight Lily, Cape Honeysuckle, Sedum, and Portulaca. 

(In this picture, the Honeysuckle falls across the water and the Lily is behind it on the left.)

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us even in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. 

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

My lovely Volunteer.

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

(One of my all time favorite quotes, ever)

Another one of my little buddies. 

This Praying Mantis is about half an inch in length, but his attitude doesn't end.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

The half whiskey barrel was left near the trash cans of one of our departing neighbors, and now holds Daisies and Grasses.

Things do not change; we change.

The biggest bed holds my Lavender and is always 'buzzing' with activity.

If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. 

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. 

The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.