Wedding Day Wildflowers Everyday

On the day before our wedding, Michael and I picked bunches of wildflowers from a local meadow.  We decorated our home with  Black-eyed-Susans, Daisies, Goldenrod, Queen Ann's Lace, and Coreopsis  for family and friends that came to celebrate with us.

The days before and the day of our wedding were deliriously colorful.  Michael and I painted our shed with wildflowers and words and my best, dearest college friend Carlene was snapping pictures of our everyday love, swimming and running and wildflower picking.  The morning of our wedding ( I could not sleep a wink at the inn), I drove back to our home to wake Michael before sunset and we watched it rise in all its pink orange beauty to welcome our day.  We then went for one of our blessed early morning swims in Skaket. A few friends and family, other lovers of swimming, joined us.

Here it is necessary to include that we saved a shark.  Coming out of the water, our friend Ethan noticed a black dorsal fin moving across the water.  He is not a big fan of open water swimming, so this was particularly unsettling for him.  Mind you, this was not a big fin, but it was a fin nonetheless swimming  in circles, disoriented.  With closer inspection, it was about three feet long, blackish on its back, grayish on its belly, with a pointed nose and large eyes. It was not a common sand shark or dog shark that we could tell but maybe a baby Mako shark.  Whatever type of shark it was, it needed to get to larger open waters of the ocean side, so Michael walked alongside it guiding it in the direction of the open sea. It finally seemed to find a course and went on its way.  It was an exciting story to add to the day.

After all the excitement, I had less than thirty minutes to get back to the inn, change, and return to the beach where friends and family would meet to witness our love and commitment to one another.  I kept the salt in my hair, pulled it back, slipped on my glove-fitting Nicole Miller dress, took the simple handful of Russian Sage that Michael had put in the room, and made it just in time to see him dressed in his handsome linen rolled-up pants and shirt that hung as naturally as our love. People close to us were there and our friend and judge Steve married us among the sea, the sand, and grasses, under a cloudless, cerulean sky.  It was perfect for us in every way.

We married on the morning of our first collaborative art and poetry exhibit opening at Cape Cod Art Museum, so the day continued to be a joyous and memorable one.  We hosted a reception and got to share the collaboration of not only our love, but our art and poetry too.

We created a wildflower garden that represents those wonderful memories and more.  When we first sowed the seeds in March, we thought none had taken because we watched robins and finches snack on them.  So we planted more.  Still we thought none had taken as what looked like a field of weeds were staring at us.  Unsure of what green leaves were what, we picked only the certain weeds we knew.  Now we do understand that "weeds are wildflowers looking for a home", and I admit I felt guilty picking any weeds, but the monster ones that looked like something from Little Shop of Horrors, well they had to go.

Almost three months later, we have a delightful, airy array of wildflowers in every color that bring joy each time we come home.  Every day we see a new poppy pop.  We have pink, yellow, and orange poppies, and larger red ones too. There are Coreopsis, and several varieties of Daisies in yellows and whites like Tidy Tips and  the African Daisy.  There are Crimson Clover, Bull Thistle, Baby Snapdragons, and Baby Blue Eyes with Sweet Alyssum sprinkled about and so many more I do not know the names of.  I adore our wildflowers.  They hug us with happiness. We talk to them, sing to them, and encourage their place in the world.

Oscar Wilde writes "With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?"

I will add art, love, and the sea to the list.

Dear carrot friends, what's on your list of happy things?

Wishing you all things happy!

~Bess

Cloud Flats

There are sand flats that we are graced to witness frequently at our beloved Skaket Beach in Orleans.  I love to observe the flats, especially while gliding over them with each stroke taken in the celestial salt waters. Skaket Beach has especially pristine flats, easily seen in the creamy water days when the sea lulls the sleepy shores. They spread for miles when tides are low and one day we were able to convince our friend Steve, a talented local potter, to meet us in the early morning hours to make an impression of them with plaster of paris.  To our delight, he showed up, and with wheelbarrow, two-by-fours, and plaster in tow, we found picturesque flats to frame and mold.  We shaped clay into the impressions and made a unique Skaket Beach sand flat bowl for us to cherish and to hold.  Michael and I were married on Skaket Beach in 2010 and it continues to nourish us everyday, if not with salt, in spirit.

Today, while swimming on one of these creamy water days, I noticed the clouds above mirroring the reflection of the flats.  I will call them cloud flats. They shared the same rippled movement, the same contours of our spine spooning. Their whites woven with blue, like waves lapping the shore. Michael painted such a scene, once, spontaneously by memory, with the same blues and whites and lapping lines. It stayed here in our studio, forgotten, leaning against the corner wall.  Today, I saw this painting in the sky...cloud flats...and now it hangs in our newly renovated bathroom with an aqua wall that was waiting for this painting.

Nature reflects its beauty in the hearts of sky, land, water, and us!  Our spine and sinew, which holds our posture strong and flexible, is figure-lined in the dunes, and sand flats, waves and clouds.  A reminder of the continuum we exist with.  A welcomed knowing of the threads that weave our soul.

Carrot friends, embrace the figure lines of nature, of our soul!

xo Bess