Small Miracles

acts of friendship...

Hello,

It’s me, a one-armed gardener who can’t garden until this broken elbow heals. That’s not entirely true, I can water my plants a previously tedious chore that I now cherish because it makes me feel a part of the plant life in my garden. This has been a week of small miracles. On Monday, my dear friend Deb came over and planted my zinnia seedlings in the garden then afterwards we shared a pot of garden tea, bits of dried flowers and herbs from last year’s growing season. Then, just yesterday my friend and neighbor Jamie offered me vegetable starts that she’s been raising in her greenhouse. I came away with two giant tomato vines and a cucumber. Flowers and plants have greater meaning when they’ve been touched by the hand of a beloved.

And then this happened:

An Equation for Miracles
In the late 20th century, a British math professor proposed that, on average, each of us could expect to experience a bona fide “miracle,” defined as an event with one in a million odds of occurring, roughly once a month. John Littlewood came up with his theory, which he coined “Littlewood’s Law of Miracles,” by calculating that for every waking hour a person perceives about one event every second.

[8 hours × 60 minutes × 60 seconds = 28,800 seconds a day] Simple math reveals that in a little more than 34 days each of us will have experienced one million events. Ergo, by Littlewood’s definition, one of them must have been miraculous. Yet some people believe that the math professor was cynically debunking miracles as mere commonplace coincidence.

I beg to differ with the learned gentleman. Finally getting to see the aurora borealis – from home no less -- is proof enough for me. — from my book, Color In and Out of the Garden, slightly edited for today.

I’m so glad you’re here,

xo Lorene

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Colors around me

Thank goodness and the goddess Flora that I can paint with one hand!

May 8, 2024

Native long spurred Columbine or goldfinch in a party dress? You decide.

May 9, 2024

When the comfrey blooms the pollinators rejoice. I think the curled buds and blossoms look rather like a caterpillar cloaked in a deep purple magician’s cape. However, the plant is seemingly immortal! I have been trying to dig it out of the back garden for nearly 20 years to no avail. The roots go deep — and the plants bounce back with alarming speed. Without a doubt, our dig-and-rebound dance will probably continue for the rest of my days.

Silver lining: I love the home-brewed fertilizer I get by stewing fresh leaves in a bucket of water for a few weeks. Diluted with water the resulting liquid feed is like a magic potion for my sweet peas, tomatoes, and other flowering plants. Traditionally, comfrey was used to treat broken bones (coincidentally, i broke my elbow a few days ago) but modern medical thought advises against ingesting comfrey due to toxic compounds. But fistfuls of fragrant sweet peas are pretty good medicine, which works for me.

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I have a favor to ask. Click this button to find out all the ways that you can share a handmade garden with others — email, links, and all the social channels. Thank you!

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May 10, 2024

Planting home: Pacific Northwest native evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) in the garden. Someone once observed that a space becomes a place when it’s imbued with meaning.

May 11, 2024

Garden goods — technically, farmers’ market goods. I’m learning to honor the expert growers. All I need to add is bread, butter and flaky salt.

May 12, 2024

For the mothers and all who tend. I received a bouquet of snapdragons when I became a mother. In the language of flowers, snapdragons symbolize grace and strength, how appropriate for mothering.

It’s funny how flowers imprint our lives with meaning — perhaps my favorite part.

May 13, 2024

Shortly after my previous IG account was lost, a friend sent me the following:

“The journeys come and go between honey and pain.” — Neruda

Such a comfort — and thank goodness for honey💛

May 14, 2024

Let’s dance! But please don’t trip…

I don’t remember the name of this vine. Sometimes it flowers with small white shaggy blooms that are sweetly fragrant. Often it doesn’t. I grow it just off the back stoop for the spectacle of these coiling tendrils of spring growth that reach out to grasp my ankles.

May 15, 2024

“Attention alters our experience and remaps our awareness. When the pattern of your attention has changed, you render your reality differently.” — Jenny Odell, “How to do Nothing”

Here’s to focusing on beauty and flowers.

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In the Store

Color In and Out of The Garden, my love letter to color and the natural world, just turned two! While it’s true the book offers (very casual) instructions on painting with watercolor, I prefer to characterize it as a memoir in color, paint and plants told in more than 100 color studies accompanied by short personal essays and observations. Enter the code: COLOR20 at checkout and get 20% off your signed copy. It’s possible I’m repeating myself, the days are a bit topsy. Feel free to share this discount code.