I am one of those people who love warmth. Which is not always the case in the local climate. I live in a part of the world where, despite global warming, we still have four very different seasons in nature – budding spring, hot summer, misty autumn and cold winter. Even though their transition is sometimes very fast, sometimes we feel as if one reflected in the other.
I’m amazed by the spring nature every year again and again. I love long summer evenings in the garden. I admire the incredible colourful beauty of autumn. But since the beginning of winter, I count how many months and weeks remain until my springtime amazement.
It does not help that, unlike most of the Czech nation, I do not really enjoy winter sports either. Besides winter walks. And it is just helping me to see the winter months a little more positive. In a warm coat and wool cap, I admire the beautiful pictures of snowy or just frozen landscapes, the “artistic” creations as if sleeping nature, and the abstract paintings in the ice.
At home, when I look (in warmth next to the fireplace, and best with a cup of hot chocolate or mulled wine in my hand) what the lens of my camera or just my mobile has captured, I’m surprised to see how many colourful beauties you can find outside in this seemingly monochromatic season of the year. Special beauty with a great deal of melancholy. Nevertheless, especially the ice abstract creations of nature are at least comparable with many works by famous artists, are they not?
And I see how richer my life today is, compared to the time 10, 20, 30 years ago.
Our family definitely belongs to the last group. Our garden is a place where we spend a lot of our time „at home“, our family dinners, weekend meals, birthday parties, coffee drinking or an evening glass of wine rarely take place inside the house between April and September.
Our garden definitely shows the changes in our family life. When the children were younger, it was a place of fun, games and constant exploration. It was a place that had to be safe for them, but at the same time diverse enough to still be interesting.
Actually, I think that in a part of our garden the birds were the best gardeners, as years ago they planted three trees with an almost perfect spacing – a cherry tree, a walnut tree and a Salix lucida willow, all of which currently have over three meters in height and are towering over the northern border of our land above flowers that grow underneath them. However, it remains true that the wildness was also part of the reason why we couldn‘t spend more time on perfecting the garden.
bles me to find a feeling of calmness and happiness within me without an obvious reason, to forget the everyday errands, that often catch us into the chronical feeling that we “do not have time”.
The daybeds in a covered part of the garden with an excellent view of the grown trees and constantly growing flowers are my favourite spot, and not just for a summer laziness. The old hammock located under a full-grown walnut tree is a great spot for some quality time spent reading a book. A previously not-so-used corner of our garden has become, after the construction of a pond with fish, a sought out a place for contemplation, and not just by myself.
Hopefully, one day all of the individual parts of our garden come together to form a path, after which if any of us go through, will remain connected with nature through sounds, smells, sight, touch and taste. Though short, a journey through a variety of sensorial experiences.
Everyone knows old houses have their flies, so you can imagine the hundred-year-old one. But in some of those “errors of the beauty”, a certain poetry could be seen in those.
