....And a Window Opens

I am giddy with life!  I am driving in pursuit of a locomotive pulling seemingly thousands of railroad cars loaded with enormous wind mill blades.  My companion in the van and I saw them as we drove on the railroad overpass.  As one, we looked at each other and said, "Let's follow it!"  And we're off, headed toward the nearest railroad crossing.  Up close, they're even more enormous.  You then have the additional impact of the length of the trucks it takes to hold those blades.  The low bass of the far-off locomotives rumbles in your chest.  The whining, clickety-clack of the train wheels beats their rhythmic tattoo over the seams of the rails.  A whiff of creosote, a touch of diesel.  Ah...life!

Just that morning, I had taken cookies and plants to the elementary school to give a gracious ending to my volunteering there.  Before I left on that journey, I had dropped in on my neighbor with a proposition.  "Look!"  I said, "Fairy gardens!"  I showed her the pictures that I had found on Facebook of flower pots with part of the side taken off, the entire height of the pot.  These pot pieces were then broken into shards which became the terraces to hold small plants and succulents, miniature bird houses, mushrooms and other magical things.  She was as entranced as I and nodded enthusiastically.  We spoke of their allure and decided that the fascination of Fairy Gardens was that they instilled a sense of wonder.  We lose our sense of wonder as we get older and yearn for it.  This reminded me of a study that I heard of years ago.  Someone had decided to ask toddlers about God.  I'm not sure how they inquired of this deity.  But the toddlers remembered God.  However,  the older they got, the less they remembered.  By the time they were adolescents, they had forgotten God altogether.  Is the loss of our sense of wonder connected to our difficulty believing in God?  Do both take the same kind of faith?   I would like to think that the belief in God would instill the same sense of wonder and joy that our fascination with Fairy gardens does. 

We have been to numerous nurseries, home improvement centers and craft and hobby stores.  We have purchased delicate ferns, vines with precious tiny flowers in different colors, succulents of all types and flavors.  We even found a tiny plant that looks like a minuscule rose tree. Everywhere we went, I told people what we were making.  Eyes brightened, mouths smiled.  People really got into it with suggestions and requests for pictures.  I felt like the Johnny Appleseed of Fairy Dust, spreading magic and joy every place we went.  We had begun to despair of either succulents or the proper sized pots until the home improvement store.  We arrived just as they were unloading several trucks.  "Do you have any succulents?"  I ask a worker with a vest.  She looks a little confused, and leads us to a flat of Phlox.  "Are these succulents?"  she asks hopefully.  I try not to laugh, while simultaneously trying to describe that most interesting of plant types, not really a cactus, not really an ordinary plant.  She asks another employee who directs us to the back of their outside "outdoors" department.  On they way, we spy the perfect sized terra cotta pots.  Two 13" pots were at the very back of their 6 foot industrial sized shelves.  "How will we get them?" I asked my partner in crime, Jane.  "You ask the short guy!" pipes a jovial voice, I look down with not a little skepticism on a jovial young man, wondering idly how somebody shorter than me was going to reach those pots.  "Does this short guy have a name?"  I ask laughing.  "Gabe - Gabriel," is the young man's reply.  For half an hour we have an engaging and mirthful guide through the bowels of the home improvement store.  "I didn't know what succulents were."  he admits as we watch as succulents were still being unloaded from the trucks.  At some point during a quest for potting soil, Gabe has wound up steering our shopping cart, "Whoa!" he says, "I don't drive carts with purses in them."  I roll my eyes, laughing while I rescue our erstwhile feminist.

We are driving along, giggling like school girls, two 50 plus women transported to another dimension where wishes are granted and we all have green thumbs.  We are laughing, joyful and happy when we spy the windmill blades, and we're off on another adventure.  After the train has crossed the river, we decide to follow it and see if it will stop at the railway yard.  We turn off onto that road I've only travelled on once, but alas our windmills have moved further on into their journey.  We decide that we will follow this new road to the end.  Jane keeps repeating, "I've lived here 20 some years and never even knew this road was here!"  We discover a huge snow plow blade that is affixed to the front of the trains.  Somebody has whimsically painted a gigantic face on the blade; googly eyes, large choppers with a shiny gold tooth, and inexplicably, a megaphone...    I take a picture, and decide the gravel of the track bed will work perfectly for the bottom of the pots.  My partner in crime agrees and struggles up the gravelly hill to assist me.

The whole week continues in wonderful delight.  We find a place by word of mouth that sells everything you ever wanted (and some you didn''t) for doll houses.  Just like model railroads, doll house paraphanalia comes in all scales.  Horrors!  What scale do we want?  We decide that because we are the 'creators' that it is permissible to mix scales.  We leave with Adirondack chairs, baskets, fishing poles, buckets, gardening tools, minute pumpkins, bird baths, what did we NOT leave with.  Oh joy!

I buy Sculpey, a polymer clay that hardens in  a low oven.  I have always loved to make small figures, and have taken a couple of ceramics classes that have allowed me to do this, but have not "modeled" in years.  I go Sculpey crazy!  I make tiny frogs, turtles, a skunk, a bluebird (of happiness?), a firebird, and 3 crazy tree frogs with long legs and droopy toes.  My fairy queen, 6 hours of effort (I followed a 37 step tutorial on making a doll face) is unanimously deemed  to be too large and will go to Jane's granddaughter.

The day dawns for the assembly.  Materials are gathered together.  Oh my God!  I don't know how to start.  I surmise that it will take a structural engineer, and quickly beckon my husband, who has watched our insanity from a distance.  It is much harder to make terraces than we thought.  But, once we get started, it gets easier.  Jane's husband has graciously cut our pots for us using a side grinder.  We have to totally release control when we shatter the sides of the pots for braces for our terraces.  We quickly find that these shards won't be enough.  Stones collected by my family from years of treks to Oregon Beaches become part of our fairy gardens.  When we start gluing our tiny bugs, and millipedes, we find these stones the perfect surfaces.

Our gardens have become objects of wonder for ourselves, grandchildren and random neighbors.  Joy has been found in discovering and creating, returning to lost skills and pastimes.  The best, is the Joy and Wonder that has followed in our wake.  And so, where a door has been closed, a window has been opened.  My soul still breathes  and expands with the rhythm of Life.  


In Joy and Wonder,

Kismet

Copyright May 2013